The 11th Biennial International Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
Topic: Shakespeare and Emotions
27–30 November 2012
The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia
Conference Website
Abstract deadline: 1 July 2012. **Edit** the deadline has been extended until 15 September 2012.
The study of emotions in history, literature, and other aspects of culture is a burgeoning field, and Shakespeare takes a very central and influential place. The conveners invite papers on any aspect of the ways in which Shakespeare and/or his contemporaries represented emotions in poetry, drama, and other works, and/or how these representations have been received by audiences and readers from the sixteenth century to the present day.
There are paradoxes to be explored — how ‘the bodily turn’ of physiological influence on emotions could in turn generate more modern models of inner consciousness alone; how concepts rooted historically in Elizabethan and Jacobean England could be adapted to fit the philosophies and concepts of later ages, through eighteenth-century literature of sensibility, nineteenth-century and Darwinian approaches, twentieth-century psychologism stimulated by Freud, and a host of others. Did Shakespeare tap into a ‘collective unconscious’ of ‘universal’ stories, or did he arbitrarily choose stories to dramatise which his affective eloquence incorporated into world literature? Why have his works proved so durable in their emotional power, both in themselves and adaptations into other media such as opera, music, film and dance? Equal attention is invited to plays in performance and in ‘closet’ critical readings, as well as textual studies and adaptations.
The New Fortune Theatre, built in 1964 to the exact dimensions of The Fortune playhouse that rivaled Shakespeare’s Globe in seventeenth-century London, will be available for original practice performances, open rehearsals, and stage-based research papers, etc.
Abstracts of c.200 words should be submitted for consideration to conference@anzsa.org, addressed to Bob White, Chris Wortham, Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers, Mark Houlahan, and Brett D. Hirsch. Abstracts should be received by 1 July 2012. **Edit** the deadline has been extended until 15 September 2012.
Details about keynote speakers, travel and accommodation, and the conference programme will be posted on the conference website as they become available.
