CALL FOR PAPERS: Shakespearean Transformations: Death, Life, and Afterlives

7th Biennial British Shakespeare Association Conference

University of Hull, 8-11 September 2016
www.hull.ac.uk/bsa2016

Keynote speakers:
Susan Bassnett (University of Warwick)
Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex)
Michael Neill (University of Auckland)
Claudia Olk (Free University of Berlin)
Barrie Rutter (Northern Broadsides)
Tiffany Stern (University of Oxford)
Richard Wilson (Kingston University)

‘Remember me!’ commands the ghost of Hamlet’s father at a moment in English history when the very purpose of remembrance of the dead was being transformed. How does the past haunt the present in Shakespeare? What do Shakespeare’s works reveal about the processes of mourning and remembrance? Shakespeare breathed new life into ‘old tales’: how do his acts of literary resuscitation transform the material he revived and what it signifies? This major international conference will investigate the ways in which Shakespeare remembered the past and we remember Shakespeare.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death offers us a timely opportunity to reflect upon the continuation of his life and art diachronically, spatially from the Globe across the globe, and materially on stage, page, canvas, music score, and screen. How does Shakespeare continue to haunt us? The second strand of the conference focuses on Shakespeare’s literary, dramatic, and transcultural afterlives. The conference thus also seeks to explore the various ways in which Shakespeare’s ghost has been invoked, summoned up, or warded off over the past four centuries.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Shakespearean transformations: borrowing/adaptation/appropriation/intertextuality
• Shakespeare and death
• Speaking to/of and impersonating the dead in Shakespeare
• Shakespeare, religion, and reformations of ritual
• Shakespeare and memory/remembrance
• Shakespeare and time: temporality/anachronism/archaism
• Shakespeare and early modern conceptions of ‘life’
• Emotion and embodiment in Shakespeare
• Performing Shakespeare: now and then
• Transcultural Shakespeare
• Critical and theoretical conceptions of/engagements through Shakespeare
• Textual resurrections: editing Shakespeare
• Rethinking Shakespearean biography
• Enlivening Shakespeare teaching
• Shakespeare in a digital age

The conference will be held in the official run-up to Hull’s year as the UK’s City of Culture in 2017. The programme will include plenary lectures, papers, seminars, workshops, and performances at Hull Truck and the Gulbenkian Centre. There will also be special workshops and sessions directed towards pedagogy.

We welcome proposals for papers (20 minutes), panels (90 minutes), or seminars/workshops (90 minutes) on any aspect of the conference theme, broadly interpreted. Abstracts (no more than 200 words) should be sent to bsa2016@hull.ac.uk by 15 December 2015.

Participants must be members of the British Shakespeare Association at the time of the conference. Details of how to join can be found here: www.britishshakespeare.ws

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Materiality of Mourning: an Interdisciplinary Workshop

The Materiality of Mourning: A 2-day interdisciplinary workshop at the University of Warwick, 19-20th May 2016. Funded by the Wellcome Trust

Organiser: Dr Zahra Newby, Dept of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick, UK.

Papers are invited for this interdisciplinary workshop, which aims to bring together scholars and practitioners across a range of disciplines for a two-day workshop exploring the roles and uses of images and objects in contexts of grief and mourning. Speakers’ UK travel and accommodation expenses will be met by funding provided by the Wellcome Trust.

Grief and bereavement are human constants, affecting all of us, across time, religions and cultures. Yet our responses to them are both emotionally and culturally conditioned, and can take a variety of forms. For historians, the remnants of past grief are often revealed to us through physical memorials: a tombstone, a carved epitaph, or a cherished possession which passes into the ownership of the bereaved. The physical object stands as a tangible remnant of embedded sets of relationships, emotions and desires which it is the job of the he historian to unpick.

This workshop sets out to explore the role of material objects and images in the processes of grief,mourningand commemoration, across a range of time periods and cultures. The aim is to open up awareness of the different ways of studying this material, allowing for cross-disciplinary insights which will deepen our understanding of both present and past societies, while allowing for the recognition of social and cultural differences. Papers are invited from both academic researchers and practitioners involved in supporting the bereaved, or the terminally ill and their families. There are two main themes:

1: Objects and images in grief, mourning and remembrance.

This session will explore the use of material objects in contexts of grief, mourning and memory in both contemporary society and the past, from a number of different perspectives: how are tangible objects, mementoes and memorials seen as beneficial aids to the process of mourning? What roles can they play in the different rituals around death? Papers may include examinations of group responses to death, as well as those of individuals and families. Discussions of the ways material objects are presented in the contexts of grief in literature and thought are also welcome.

2: Embodied Emotion: accessing historic grief and mourning through material remains?

This session will ask how far we can gain access to the lived experience of grief and mourning through the material remains of the past. Archaeologists, historians and art historians often seek to understand past societies and cultures through the physical remains they have left behind; yet cultural values and practices around death and mourning can vary widely from one society to another, and issues such as changing rates of mortality can affect the ways in which societies approach death and bereavement. Papers will address the question of how much we can glean about past emotions through the physical monuments which remain, and the representation of such objects in literature or philosophy, as well as the question of agency and responsibility: whose grief is expressed; to what extent is it ‘real’, or the reflection of societal expectations, and which agents are involved in the creation of the tomb and its imagery?

Confirmed Speakers:
Sarah Tarlow, Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester: ‘Body, Thing, Memory'
Michael Brennan, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Liverpool Hope University. 'Why materiality matters'
Douglas Davies, (Professor of the Study of Religion, Durham): ‘Grave and hopeful emotions’
Lucy Noakes (History, Brighton): Memorials and grief in WWII Britain
Su Chard (independent funerary celebrant) 'When the mantelpiece spoke.'
Dawn Nevin, Director of Counselling and Family Support at Myton Hospices, Warwickshire.
Pam Foley, Sculptor ‘Routes of Sorrow: grieving without finality’

Academics and practitioners across all disciplines are warmly invited to offer papers exploring the research questions outlined above. PhD candidates and Early Career Researchers are particularly welcome. Disciplines may include, but are not limited to: Psychology, Sociology, History, Medical Education, Philosophy, Bereavement Counselling, Religious studies, History of Art and Architecture, Classics and Ancient History, Literary studies, Politics and Public policy. Please send a title and brief abstract (up to 200 words) to Zahra.newby@warwick.ac.uk by 29th February 2016.