John Lyly’s Galatea at the Jerwood Space, London

We invite scholars to participate in exploring John Lyly’s Galatea at the Jerwood Space this August. The award-winning theatre maker Emma Frankland and Andy Kesson will be working with a company of performers, exploring the play’s representations of non-normative sexuality and its concluding investment in transgender identity. We are grateful to Shakespeare Bulletin, the University of Roehampton and the Before Shakespeare project for funding and supporting this work.

Scholars are invited to participate in this exploration by joining us in the performance space in two- to three-hour slots, available throughout the week (11am-1pm, 2pm-5pm). Scholars are welcome to come as witnesses to the workshop, to document it or to take a more active role and join the performance workshop itself. The workshop is a week-long process of theatrical research and development and is not building towards a final performance at the end of the week.

The workshop will take place 1-5 August. For further information, and to book a slot, please email andy.kesson@roehampton.ac.uk. For anyone interested but unable to attend, we will be documenting the week’s work on the Before Shakespeare website.

"Popular Fiction and the English Renaissance" : Call for Papers

Abstracts are invited for a conference on "Popular Fiction and the English Renaissance", to take place at Newcastle University 14-15 April 2012. Deadline for submissions: 16th Dec.

The conference aims to explore those texts and plays which were most enthusiastically received and read by sixteenth and seventeenth century readers, as well as, more broadly, the themes and approaches which Renaissance authors identified as appealing to a broad audience of readers and theatre-goers.

Topics could include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Particularly popular sixteenth and seventeenth century texts, for example John Lyly's Euphues; literary responses to these works by other writers.
• Renaissance authors who were particularly concerned with the popularity and saleability of their works.
• The early modern literary marketplace; tension between print and manuscript culture.
• The rise of the sequel in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.
• The cult of the author in the Renaissance.
• Renaissance recycling of classical and/or medieval material.
• English use of popular continental models and texts.
• Authorial interaction with/awareness of the reader.
• Renaissance texts and authors in modern popular culture (print, film, television or theatre)

Papers which address any of these themes from an interdisciplinary perspective are also warmly welcomed. The conference will consider papers on any aspect of the theme, in the period 1500-1700.
Abstracts (250 words max) should be sent to Katherine Heavey (katherine.heavey@ncl.ac.uk) by Friday 16th December.