The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0153  Friday, 5 April 2013

 

From:        Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         Friday, April 5, 2013

Subject:     BSA Sixth Biennial Conference

 

The British Shakespeare Association is delighted to announce its Sixth Biennial Conference: 

 

Shakespeare: Text, Power, Authority

University of Stirling

3-6 July, 2014

 

A full Call for Papers and details of the conference website (which will include registration and all other pertinent information) will follow in due course, but we would like to invite all members to ‘save the date’ and join us in Scotland.
 

 

CONFERENCE ABSTRACT AND KEYNOTES

 

In the four hundred and fiftieth year of Shakespeare’s birth, this conference seeks to explore questions of authority for Shakespeare, in Shakespeare, and about Shakespeare. It aims to investigate the relationship between text, power, and authority in the writing of Shakespeare and writing about Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s works ask us repeatedly to think about what constitutes authority, about where authority lies, and about the performance of authority. Papers and panels will therefore address these questions. Topics to be discussed might include, but are not limited to, biblical and classical authorities, monarchy and sovereignty, and the representation and performance of power. Shakespeare’s works have also themselves repeatedly been used as authority, and we therefore also welcome contributions that explore some of the different ways in which his plays and poems have been deployed in various times and places. How is Shakespeare used in schools? What is his relationship to discussions about national identity? In the year of the referendum on Scottish independence, we particularly welcome contributions that explore ‘Scottish Shakespeare(s)’. Shakespeare’s works also force us to think about textual authority. What is textual authority? What makes one text more authoritative than another? What role does copyright play here? How have ideas of textual authority changed over time?

 

The conference programme will include lectures, papers, workshops, seminars, performances, and excursions to local attractions, including the seventeenth-century Library of Innerpeffray and Stirling Castle. There will also be special workshops and sessions directed at local schools. Taking advantage of Stirling’s beautiful landscaped campus, a highlight of the programme will be an outdoor performance of a play by Shakespeare by the Glaswegian theatre company Bard in the Botanics. Confirmed keynote speakers are Professor Margreta de Grazia (University of Pennsylvania), Professor Andrew Murphy (University of St Andrews), Professor John Drakakis (University of Stirling), Dr Colin Burrow (University of Oxford), and Dr Michael Bogdanov (Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre, co-founder of the English Shakespeare Company, and founder of The Wales Theatre Company).

 

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