renaissance

“Cultures of Collectivity in Pre-Revolutionary French Literature”

In keeping with this year’s MMLA conference theme of “Cultures of Collectivity”, this panel solicits propositions that reflect on the many ways in which the individual and the collective were conceived in pre-revolutionary society. Rather than viewing the individual and the collective as being separate facets of social existence, papers that look at the liminal movement between subjective experience and the larger political body will be of particular interest. Possible topics include, but are certainly not limited to:

This two-day interdisciplinary symposium invites scholars to examine early modern women’s agency from a transnational perspective. Conversations about women’s agency continue to ripple across the world, from new, passionate campaigns in Mexico and Poland that have fought to address feminicide and sexual violence, to the Women’s Marches, which have annually inspired global response. Now, we turn with fresh urgency to early modern women’s participation in intellectual and literary cultures that bridged regional, national, and transnational divides.

“Shakespeare in Fiction”

Comparative Drama Conference

Orlando, FL, October 14-16, 2021

Deadline: April 1, 2021

The global medieval and early modern world (broadly considered, c. 900-1750) underwent myriad profound changes, from devastating famines, plagues, and wars to an increased entanglement of the continents, economic transformations, and technological and scientific developments. These changes were often accompanied by calls for the reshaping of the institutions and structures – political, religious, intellectual, etc. – which undergirded societies’ approach to these challenges, encompassing such responses as resistance, resilience, and renewal. 

The CLCS Renaissance/Early Modern forum of the MLA invites paper proposals for a guaranteed session at MLA 2022 (Washington, D.C., 6-9 January 2022).  We plan a panel on insurrection, tyranny, and resistance in a wide range of early modern contexts.  What political theories and literary traditions shape early modern writers’ understandings?  How do literary texts themselves respond to contemporary events, imagine alternative futures, and transform current conversations?  We particularly welcome comparative and transnational perspectives.  Please send 250-word abstracts and brief CVs to Penelope Anderson pea@indiana.edu by 20 March 2021.

Deadline Extended !!

European Shakepeare Research Association Conference 2021

3-6 June 2021: VIRTUAL

Call for Seminar Papers: Shakespeare and the Nature of Utopia/Utopian Nature

Day conference
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK, Saturday 6 November 2021 
We are looking for papers which consider journeying, place and the way as tropes in ancient or modern texts, and we look especially for associations with Christian and Biblical themes.

Papers normally have a reading time of about 20 minutes, and are followed by a few minutes of discussion. They are offered for publication in The Glass and subsequently on the CLSG website.

The deadline for offering a paper is 31 May 2021. Send a provisional title and a few lines on how you will tackle your topic. Email Dr Roger Kojecký, secretary@clsg.org

PAMLA 2021 LAS VEGAS: "CITY OF GOD, CITY OF DESTRUCTION" (Thursday, November 11 - Sunday, November 14, 2021 at Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, hosted by University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Session: Drama and Society

Contacts: Kimberly Jew, University of Utah (kimberly.jew@utah.edu) & Judith Saunders (judith.saunders1@gmail.com)

From John Gower’s account of Robert Grosseteste’s construction of a talking head to George Herbert’s depiction of the heart as a place for divine encounters; from Ben Jonson’s pride in his literary offspring to Victor Frankenstein’s horrified reaction to the physical reality of his own creation, creativity has long been thought of in bodily terms. Imagery centered on the human body – and, frequently, on its procreative propensities – serves to configure the relationship between creator and creation or to describe interpersonal exchange and mutual dependence; bodily metaphors are useful both in celebrating human achievements and castigating Promethean pride and solipsistic self-involvement.

This seminar is part of the World Shakespeare Congress, planned as a fully virtual event for July 18-24, 2021. We invite investigations of Eastern Europe as a node in global engagements with the Shakespearean canon and with Shakespeare as cultural capital, ranging from the early modern English playing companies’ presence in Eastern Europe and early Eastern European adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, to the global influence of twentieth-century Eastern European studies and productions. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

Classical Reformations: Beyond Christian Humanism

An online conference: Friday 3 September 2021

The Warburg Institute

New Directions in Much Ado About Nothing

De Montfort University in Leicester, England, will be hosting on 22 April 2021 a virtual conference reflecting on the closure of theatres in Shakespeare's time and our own. We welcome papers on a range of responses to the closures, including those by writers (Shakespeare and others), playgoers, patrons, and civil and state authorities, some of whom welcomed and some lamented the loss of public theatre.

While canonical works like Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote have enjoyed rich histories of translation, minor texts rarely see as much activity. Even for famous authors, unusual forms may not see the light of day at all. Take Cervantes’ own entremeses, for example: a kind of theatrical interlude prevalent in Golden Age Spain, these short texts have attracted only a handful of translations compared to the Quixote’s hundreds. Carrying out the author’s own biting remark that he wrote dramatic pieces never to be dramatized, the lack of translation only reinforces the already problematic centering of canonical texts. Unavailability across languages ingrains the marginal status of other works and, with them, the marginal figures they represent.