STAGING SILENCE FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE RENAISSANCE

3–4 July 2025 / St John’s College, Cambridge

This two-day, in-person conference will explore developing traditions of silence in dramatic texts from antiquity to the Renaissance. Papers are sought from scholars across a range of fields, including classical reception, comparative literature, and medieval and/or early modern English literature. Topics may include:

-       mute characters and/or characters who never appear on stage;

-       characters who gain or lose the power of speech (welcoming perspectives e.g. from disability studies);

-       dramatic silence as represented on page and/or stage (e.g. book history approaches and/or performance studies);

-       the history and/or function of animals on stage;

-       the relationship of dramatic silence to music and/or inarticulacy;

-       representations of dramatic silence in contemporary discursive texts;

-       dumb shows;

-       silence in neo-Latin drama.

Speakers will include Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham), and Julie Stone Peters (Columbia).

Please submit a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute paper to John Colley (stagingsilence@gmail.com) by noon on Thursday 9 January 2025. Preference will be given to papers with an interdisciplinary and/or comparative focus. It’s anticipated that early career speakers will be able to apply for travel bursaries.