DEADLINE EXTENDED: Performing The Early Modern English Woman (1500-1710): Seeing and Being Seen on the Domestic, Civic, and Dramatic Stage.
For Early Modern Women, the very act of seeing or being seeing was fraught. Whether in their domestic roles or later as they first appeared on English stages, much was talked about the gaze of the early modern woman and the sway she held over others' gazes. Whether she was catching the eye of a potential lover or looking longingly after her children, her freedom, her future, the language of sight surrounds these women. This panel will look for papers exploring the theatrical power within these depictions of women seeing and being seen. The performative nature of being a woman who must appear chaste while remaining sexually desirable.