Daily Archives: 28 October 2019

CFP Medieval English Theatre Conference

Consumption, Performance, and Early Theatre, University of Wolverhampton・Saturday, 4 April 2020

Consumption involves the using up of a resource, whether through acts of imbibing or intake and acts of expenditure or through decaying or wasting away. Early performance relies on consumption, whether this takes the form of Eucharistic consumption accompanying liturgy; Eve’s sinful act of consumption that provided pretext and plot for urban biblical pageants; the use of performance to sell goods and medicines; the material goods required to create dramatic spectacle; the consumption of drink, ideas and time by spectators and performers; or the Tudor feasts that produced space for dramatic interludes. The Records of Early English Drama, with their lists of goods, payments and services, provide an archive of evidence for consumption practice. Yet acts of consumption in early drama are often fraught. Consumption is as often used to articulate doubt or mark characters and performance makers as morally dubious as it is to ensnare the senses of audiences. In a climate both preoccupied with material consumption at a global level and in which we, as researchers, theatre practitioners and teachers are frequently reminded that our labour is also consumer material, this conference seeks to examine how consumption is manifested, managed and questioned in early performance. Topics might include but are not limited to:

• The consumption of raw materials and/ or material culture in the production and performance of early drama
• Food or fasting in early performance; the morality, ethics and/or theology of consumption
• Economies of consumption in early performance
• Ritual performance and faith; inclusion and community
• Subversive consumption, over-consumption and/or consumption as a source of ‘othering’
• Consumption, spectacle and the senses
• The consumption of play manuscripts and texts
• Critical reflections on the role of consumption within modern performances and broadcasts of early drama
• Critical reflections on the role of consumption in early drama pedagogy and/or research

We invite 300-word proposals from scholars at any stage of study or career, for 20 minute papers or roundtable sessions; please submit your proposals by 1 December 2019 to Daisy Black d.black3@wlv.ac.uk

On the day before the conference (Friday, 3 April 2020) there will be a Postgraduate and Early Career Symposium organised with the Early English Drama & Performance Network; more information about this will be posted soon.

Further details and registration information will be posted soon at Medieval English Theatre.

Bloomsbury Medieval Studies

Bloomsbury has recently launched a new interdisciplinary digital resource, Bloomsbury Medieval Studies. It brings together high-quality secondary content with visual primary sources, an exclusive new reference work and object images into one cross-searchable platform, to open up the medieval world for students and scholars across this rich field of study.

This unprecedented platform comprises content from Bloomsbury and other leading publishers in the field, including I.B. Tauris, Amsterdam University Press and Arc Humanities Press – as well as medieval maps from the British Library and newly digitized incunabula from Senate House Library.

Users will benefit from instant, searchable access to a new and exclusively commissioned reference work, the Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. Written by an international group of scholars, it offers a non-Eurocentric approach with articles including:

– Thematic overviews of intellectual discourse, migration and trade systems
– Primary source analyses of Maya Civilization, Japan and Korean Kingdom of Silla
– Core Case Studies of queens and powerful women of the Middle Ages.

The platform also provides full digital access to over 150 eBooks– ranging from primary texts to research monographs, companions, primary source readers and more.

Interested in finding out more?
Bloomsbury Medieval Studies will be available for 30-day free trials and can be purchased on a perpetual access basis. If you would like to register interest in a trial, or have any questions about the product please contact Katie.Dean@bloomsbury.com.

The full press release including further details of resources available can be downloaded here.

Download (DOCX, 529KB)

PARTHENOS Digital Humanities Training

The EU-funded PARTHENOS project has released an online teaching module, Digital Humanities and Heritage Science Research Infrastructures: New Approaches to the Study of Pre-Modern Manuscripts, which seeks to bring together knowledge and resources from Research Infrastructures and Humanities projects. The module will be of interest to scholars looking to apply Digital Humanities and/or Heritage Science methods to medieval and early modern manuscript studies. It was produced in collaboration with teams working at Nottingham Trent University (UK) and the University of Canterbury (NZ).

The module is part of the PARTHENOS Training Suite, which provides reusable training materials that can be accessed for free by students, lecturers, and anyone interested in issues and skills related to e-Heritage and Digital Humanities. More information about the PARTHENOS Project can be found here.