Macbeth in European Culture, International Symposium
University of Murcia (Spain)
22-24th March, 2022
Despite its Scottish-Anglo setting and its close relationship to the politics of the Stuart regency, Macbeth has proven one of Shakespeare’s most suggestive plays for practitioners and artists working far beyond its original Anglophone context. The play’s potential for violence, its exploration of hierarchy and power, its conflicting gender dynamics and its supernatural dimensions are just some of the elements that have been appropriated on stages around Europe. They have also prompted the transformation of the play into different shapes, formats and media, and so this symposium intends to inspect the multiple afterlives of Macbeth beyond its initial historical and cultural resonances. We are looking for innovative work that approaches the play from regional, national, continental and intercontinental angles as we try to chart Macbeth’s reception in or in relation to Europe from the seventeenth century to the present. Among other possibilities, we invite discussions concerning the relocation of the play’s ideological, gender/sexuality, regional/ethnic/racial/religious boundaries within specific historical and theoretical contexts. Contributions on any of the following are welcome:
— Macbeth in European theatrical, operatic, cinematic, televisual or online performance;
— Different European versions (adaptations, rewritings, appropriations, updates) of Macbeth;
— Translations of Macbeth into non-Anglophone European languages: the importance and impact of those translations in their target cultures and in intercultural contexts;
— Reception of Anglophone Macbeth in non-Anglophone contexts, or the reception of non-Anglophone Macbeth in Anglophone contexts;
— Traveling Macbeth: international tours of the play, intercultural performances of the play;
— Macbeth in European visual cultures: from illustration to audiovisual art;
— Macbeth in European digital cultures;
— Theoretical reflections on Macbeth as a case study of ‘European Shakespeare’ and or versus ‘global Shakespeare’.
We particularly favor contributions which relate interventions (artistic or otherwise) to broader regional, national, transnational, continental or intercontintental concerns and to the history of Shakespeare’s reception in these contexts. A 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio should be sent to Juan F. Cerdá (juanfcerda@um.es) and Paul Prescott (pprescott@ucmerced.edu) by December 3rd, 2021.
The symposium will be held at the La Merced Campus of the University of Murcia (Spain), yet online participation will be available for those facing traveling restrictions.
Tag Archives: Symposium
Region and Enmity, A RaceB4Race Symposium
Region and Enmity, A RaceB4Race Symposium
October 19-22, 2021
Co-sponsored by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University.
Enmity is a sustaining force for systemic racism, a fervent antipathy toward a category of people. Enmity exists at the nexus of individual and group identity and produces difference by desiring opposition and supremacy, imagining separation by force, and willing conflict. Enmity unfolds in different ways in different places, according to local logics of territory, population, language, or culture, even as these geographical divisions are subject to constant change.
This interdisciplinary symposium, hosted by Rutgers University, focuses on how early modern racial discourses are tied to cartographical markers and ambitions. The notions of enmity and region provide a dual dynamic lens for tracing the racial repertoires that developed in response to increasingly hostile contention between early modern cultural and political forces. The symposium will invite scholars to take up this intersection between region and enmity, and to examine how belief in difference, or the emergence of polarizing structures and violent practices, configured race thinking and racial practices in ways that are both unique to different territories and that transcend them.
RaceB4Race is brought to life by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in partnership with The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Division of Humanities at Arizona State University. RaceB4Race is underwritten by the Hitz Foundation.
Learn more about RaceB4Race here.
This RaceB4Race symposium will be held virtually. Registration opens August 16, 2021 at 9:00 am EDT.