Deadline for Proposals: 1 June 2022
Further information can be found here.
Two sessions (at least) will be of interest to member of PPCN:
Then and Now: Disaster and Adversity in Medieval Performance – organised by Jacqueline Jenkins (Calgary) and Susannah Crowder (John Jay College, CUNY)
Medieval performers and their audiences were no strangers to catastrophe. Yersinia pestis claimed the lives of “an estimated 40% to 60% of all people in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa” in the fourteenth century (Monica H. Green, “Editor’s Introduction” to the Medieval Globe, vol 1 (2014), 9); wars, environmental disasters (such as the Little Ice Age) and attendant crop failures and famine, religious persecution, and social upheaval threatened the rest. The medieval world understood that catastrophe could hit across many registers, affecting individuals personally, in their communities or amongst their fellow citizens, and—as all humanity—in the inevitable approach of death or the eschatological march towards doomsday. Medieval performance acknowledges the constant proximity of catastrophe in the performance texts that survive, and in the archives that record the complaints and costs of medieval dramatic activity. Contemporary performers and scholars encounter their own, specific, versions of catastrophe in the work we do to excavate the performance past, to understand and unearth medieval performance practices, staging patterns and material conditions, and to provide for audience engagement and players’ experiences. And, arguably, never more so than now, as we work through—and conduct our work through—the current global health crisis. For this panel, we seek contributions of short scholarly papers that actively engage with questions of catastrophe in medieval and Tudor drama and performance practices, or that undertake examination of the new experiences and knowledge produced through our encounters with medieval performance during this contemporary moment of catastrophe.
Some possible paper topics:
- How do medieval performance texts and practices engage, produce, and / or resist catastrophe?
- How do medieval performance texts and practices represent, resist, and / or enforce social hierarchies or cultural expectations through the implementation of disaster or its imagery?
- What do the extant records reveal about medieval performance catastrophes, real or ‘urban legend’ (to cite Jody Enders, Death by Drama)?
- How have ‘catastrophes’ in contemporary productions of medieval performance impacted scholarly discussions? What scholarly and/or archival catastrophes is our field still working to correct? In what ways might failure open up greater critical possibility?
- How has the current global catastrophe created or imposed new perspectives on medieval performance? What insights can we draw from our pandemic-era experience of in-person and online performance, scholarship and research, and the classroom and conferences?
This is an ongoing working group focused on Medieval Performance. As in previous years, discussions will begin online, convened by the organizers, in the months prior to the meeting in order to foster a deeper exchange in person. The organizers invite participation from both institutionally-based and independent scholars, and from graduate students as well as faculty. Completed papers of approx. 10 ds pages and 200-word abstracts (circulated to the audience at the conference) will be due on September 16, when essays will be shared. During September and October, specific prompts will foster online conversation about shared findings and areas of interest, in preparation for the in-person discussion. Audience participation in the discussion at the conference is invited.
Early Modern Catastrophes – organised by Danielle Rosvally (Buffalo) and Donovan Sherman (Seton Hall University)
The early modern stage is no stranger to catastrophe. From the horrors of war and pestilence placed onstage by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, to catastrophes linked to early modern performance spaces (the plague closing London theatres, the Astor Place Riots, the proliferation of digital performance in the wake of COVID-19), to the inherent catastrophe of the drama itself, as perceived by eighteenth-century dramatists like Nahum Tate, disaster and crisis weave themselves through the dramaturgy of the era. Alternately, the work of early modern drama can be viewed as a salve–perhaps a suspect one–to crises, as with popular initiatives to stage Shakespeare in prisons and with refugee populations. We invite papers to consider how early modernity, globally and broadly construed, has staged, understood, or engaged with catastrophe.
Paper topics may include: how catastrophe has been explored through and/or impacted historically marginalized voices (queer, differently abled, nonwhite, trans) from dominant theatrical and historical narratives; digital and virtual adaptations of early modern works (the crush of Zoom adaptations during the height of COVID, e.g. and the ways catastrophe has touched these projects; the relation of early modernity to ecological catastrophe; and non-European forms/alternative modes of performance (religious, social, political) that challenge the crisis of early modern drama’s popular understanding as an ossified, dominating, privileged space in the canon ). We also welcome papers that recognize new ways to conceive of performance in traditional early modern texts (by Shakespeare and his oft-anthologized contemporaries) that open these texts to more contemporary work in performance studies and other theoretical innovations.
Because of their ubiquity in performance and curricula, early modern performance forms have a great deal of experience bearing the weight of catastrophe. This workgroup will consider more deeply how this reflects our understanding of early modern and contemporary cultures. Following the success of our meeting in San Diego, we would like to reconvene the Early Modern working group on an annual basis and look forward to the opportunity to do so in New Orleans.
This session will be a traditional working group paper exchange. Participants will be asked to submit abstracts for their papers, upon which they will be grouped thematically to exchange papers and feedback before the conference. The organizers will then synthesize the material to create a discussion forum at the conference proper. We also hope to include respondents in the in-person group meeting; these figures will be established scholars who can help synthesize the work and engage in larger dialogues during the conference. We believe that this format is useful to contributors for getting direct feedback on their works in progress, while also facilitating larger conversations that can advance the field more generally. We want to ensure that participants can walk away from the workgroup with direct and specific commentary on their work as well as a sense that they have contributed to broader disciplinary conversations. Because this workgroup is ongoing (i.e. we have met before and hope to meet again), we hope to create not just dialogue about new and emerging works of scholarship, but also help our workgroup members forge connections and contacts in the field to advance their projects between conferences.
Premodern Performance Cultures 