Conference dates: December 10-11, 2026

Location: University of Verona, Verona (Italy) – hybrid

Organiser: Prof. Emanuel Stelzer (emanuel.stelzer@univr.it)

This international conference investigates the receptions of Ophelia from the early twentieth century to the present, positioning itself as a sequel to the conference The Receptions of Ophelia, 1599-1900 (https://www.dlls.univr.it/?ent=iniziativa&convegno=1&id=13026) within the project of Excellence “Inclusive Humanities” of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona. While the previous event traced Ophelia’s emergence and transformations up to the fin de siècle, this conference turns to the modern and contemporary afterlives of this Shakespearean character.

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Ophelia has continued to function as a powerful cultural node through which questions of gender, mental health, desire, mourning, resistance, and artistic self-definition are negotiated. She has been repeatedly re-imagined across media, disciplines, and ideological frameworks: from Freudian psychoanalytic engagement with hysteria and melancholia, to modernist and avant-garde theatre, from feminist and queer revisions to film, visual art, popular music, and digital culture. Ophelia’s figure is explored not only in scholarly and artistic canons but also in mass culture, where her imagery and narrative have been reworked in unexpected forms, from experimental performance art to contemporary songwriting.

The conference aims at exploring how Ophelia’s meanings have been reshaped in response to modernity. We welcome contributions that examine adaptations and appropriations, as well as theoretical engagements that use Ophelia as a conceptual figure.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

·  Psychoanalytic receptions of Ophelia; 

·  Medical/health humanities;

·  Modernist and postmodernist rewritings and theatrical experiments;

·  Feminist, queer, and intersectional re-interpretations;

·  Ophelia in twentieth- and twenty-first-century theatre, cinema, opera, and performance art;

·  Visual art, photography, and media cultures of Ophelia;

·  Ophelia in popular culture and music;

·  Political, postcolonial, and global receptions of Ophelia;

·  Digital, virtual, and social media reconfigurations.

We invite proposals from scholars working in literary studies, theatre and performance studies, film and media studies, art history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, gender studies, cultural studies, music studies, and related disciplines. Confirmed keynote speaker: Dr Fiona Gregory (Monash University), author of Actresses and Mental Illness. Histrionic Heroines (2019).

Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short biographical note, to:
emanuel.stelzer@univr.it

Deadline for submissions: May 4, 2026

Due to financial and time-related constraints, only a limited number of selected proposals can be accommodated at the conference; however, selected papers may also be considered for publication in an edited volume or a special issue of a journal.