September
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.407 Thursday, 18 September 2014
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: September 16, 2014 at 10:07:17 AM EDT
Subject: RSC Casts First Black Actor as Iago in Othello
From The Independent
Royal Shakespeare Company casts first black actor as Iago in Othello
The Royal Shakespeare Company has cast a black actor in the role of notorious villain Iago for the first time.
The British theatre group, based in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, has given the famous part from tragedy Othello to Game of Thrones' Lucian Msamati, who will star alongside Hugh Quarshie next summer.
Never before have both leading roles been taken by black actors, with artistic director Gregory Doran admitting the move will shake up the play’s racial politics.
“Really watch this space,” he said at a press conference yesterday. “I know when I was watching it with a really good white Iago opposite Hugh, I was thinking right, yes, I’ve seen this before, terrific.
“But with Lucian, every line became freshly minted and it challenged the whole play in a way I found completely revelatory. You just watch two really, really good actors doing it and that is the major issue.”
Born in Britain and raised in Zimbabwe by Tanzanian parents, 38-year-old Msamati is “thrilled and honoured” to be playing Iago.
“Back at the RCS, playing an iconic character opposite one of the most distinguished actors in the country, under the watchful eye of a passionate, intelligent director? Dreams don’t get better than this,” he told the Evening Standard.
Quarshie, 59, will be returning to the RSC for the first time since 1996, having since starred as Ric Griffin in Holby City and Captain Panaka in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Iqbal Khan will direct Othello, which forms part of the RSC’s Venice season also featuring Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Ben Jonson’s Volpone.
John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice, better known as ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, will also be performed for the first time in almost 400 years.
Iago is renowned as one of the more demanding Shakespearean roles, with Rory Kinnear winning an Olivier Award earlier this year for his National Theatre portrayal of the scheming villain.
The arts world has come under pressure of late to improve opportunities for talent from diverse backgrounds.
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey described the lack of black and ethnic minority faces on UK television as “frankly weird” last month.
Idris Elba and Lenny Henry wrote an open letter to TV bosses saying how “dismayed” they feel at the poor numbers of people from ethnic minority backgrounds working in the industry and calling for a “ring-fenced pot of money” for black, Asian and minority ethnic programmes.
[ . . . ]
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.406 Thursday, 18 September 2014
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: September 17, 2014 at 7:58:27 AM EDT
Subject: SMFS 2015 Foremother’s Prize
http://smfsweb.org/smfs-2015-foremothers-prize/
SMFS 2015 Foremother’s Prize
By Melissa Ridley Elmes
The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship is now accepting applications for the 2015 Foremother’s Prize for Graduate Students.
Funded through the generous gift of royalties from the editors and authors of the Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Judith Bennett and Ruth Mazzo Karras, eds.), the grant provides $2,000 for a graduate student to undertake a significant professional development initiative. The winner will be partnered with a senior medieval feminist scholar whose guidance and association can assist her in developing and executing the project.
Such projects might include:
- Travel to a conference relevant to medieval feminist scholarship, for instance, the annual Gender and Medieval Studies Conference in the U.K.
- Travel to visit archives, research libraries, museums, manuscript collections, or archeological or architectural sites
- Travel to conduct other forms of on-site research
- Development of a digital humanities project related to feminist research
- Organizing of a medieval feminist conference or colloquium
- Travel to allow sustained work with a mentor
SMFS is especially interested in assisting students whose projects are not otherwise funded. The winner must be willing to write a reflective report describing the outcome of the project that will appear on the SMFS public website.
Applicants should provide: a completed application form (to include existing funding sources and advisor signature), a 500-word description of the project including its scope and development, proposed timeline, and a potential budget.
Application Deadline: January 1, 2015
The winner will be announced by February 15, 2015
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.405 Thursday, 18 September 2014
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: September 16, 2014 at 10:10:27 AM EDT
Subject: CFP: Early Modern Women and the Book: Ownership, Circulation, and Collecting
CALL FOR PAPERS: Early Modern Women and the Book: Ownership, Circulation, and Collecting
Proposals are sought for a panel — “Early Modern Women and the Book: Ownership, Circulation, and Collecting” — to be proposed for the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) in Montreal and Longueuil, Quebec, July 6-11, 2015.
We seek proposals for papers that examine early modern British women who owned books, circulated books, or created libraries or book collections between 1500-1700, a period that saw increased literacy and a revolution in book production and circulation. Scholars have reconstructed and assessed the collections and libraries of Renaissance men, including Harvey, Dee, Jonson, Hales, and Drake; women’s book ownership, as a subject of scholarly inquiry, “awaits its historian,” observes David McKitterick (2000) in a study of Elizabeth Puckering’s library. What resources (commonplace books, poetry miscellanies, inventories, etc.) shed light on women’s circulation of books within communities? What are the marks — figurative, material, cultural — of women’s book usage, ownership, and collecting? What can the creation of book collections or libraries tell us about social status, family ties, confessional affiliations, education, economic status, travels? What methodologies illuminate these interrelated topics?
By Oct. 1, 2014, please send a file containing a 350 word abstract and a 50-word biographical statement to Leah Knight (
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.404 Thursday, 18 September 2014
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: September 16, 2014 at 10:09:24 AM EDT
Subject: Newberry 2015 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
http://www.newberry.org/01222015-2015-multidisciplinary-graduate-student-conference
2015 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Renaissance Graduate Programs
Thursday, January 22, 2015 to Saturday, January 24, 2015
CFP deadline: October 15
The Center for Renaissance Studies’ annual graduate student conference, organized and run by advanced doctoral students, has become a premier opportunity for emerging scholars to present papers, participate in discussions, and develop collaborations across the field of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern studies.
Participants from a wide variety of disciplines find a supportive and collegial forum for their work, meet future colleagues from other institutions and disciplines, and become familiar with the Newberry Library and its resources.
This year’s conference will comprise twenty-four sessions with three twenty-minute papers each, for a total of seventy-two presenters.
Each year since 2007, selected papers have been published in a peer-edited online conference proceedings.
Call for Papers
We invite abstracts for 20-minute papers from master’s or PhD students from any discipline on any medieval, Renaissance, or early modern topic in Europe, the Americas, or the Mediterranean world. We encourage submissions from disciplines as varied as the literature of any language, history, classics, anthropology, art history, music, comparative literature, theater arts, philosophy, political science, religious studies, transatlantic studies, disability studies, and manuscript studies. Because of the conference’s multidisciplinary nature, all papers must be in English.
Eligibility: Proposals are accepted only from students at member institutions of the Center for Renaissance Studies consortium. Students who presented a paper at the previous year’s conference are given lower priority, though they are still eligible to submit a proposal.
Proposals must be submitted online, by midnight CDT Wednesday, October 15. Complete this online submission form. The organizing committee will meet November 2 to select presenters to invite; we will notify everyone who submits an abstract of their decisions within a week of that meeting.
Download a PDF Call for Papers flyer to post and distribute.
Conference organizers
Eight advanced graduate students from consortium schools will organize the conference and chair sessions:
- Caroline Carpenter, English, Claremont Graduate University
- Max Deardorff, History, University of Notre Dame
- Patrick McGrath, English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Julia Miglets, History, Northwestern University
- Sarah Morris, English, Miami University
- James Seth, English, Oklahoma State University
- Amanda Taylor, English, University of Minnesota
- Christine Zappella, Art History, University of Chicago
Faculty and graduate students of Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions may be eligible to apply for travel funds to attend CRS programs or to do research at the Newberry Library. Each member university sets its own policies and deadlines and some may limit eligibility to certain colleges or departments. Be sure to contact your Representative Council member in advance, as early as possible, for details.
Cost and registration information:
Online conference registration will open in December 2014.
The early conference registration fee will be $30 for students from consortium member universities and their guests and $40 for those from other institutions. Late registration (after January 10) will be $45 and $55, respectively.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.403 Thursday, 18 September 2014
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014
Subject: Apologies
Dear Subscribers,
There has been a problem with the mailing program since August when SHAKSPER migrated to a new server.
I hope that it is fixed. If not, we will still work on it.
Hardy