Blackfriars Conference 2021

This three day conference invites papers that explore the performative conditions of early modern plays, the effect of place on those performances, the practices of the players, and the texts themselves through time.

Topics for consideration might include:

• Casting practice, rehearsal practice, performance practice
• Evidence of practice in the extant plays or documents
• Evidence of education or experience in plays or documents
• Connections between texts (editorial, allusions, character symmetry, etc)
• The status of ‘performance’ in early modern culture
• Audiences and audience response
• Props and costumes
• Spaces of performance

Please submit 250-300 word abstracts for 13 minute (10 minute for papers not employing actors to demonstrate a point) papers by June 30, 2021

Presenters will receive notification by August 1, when registration opens.

Presenters wishing to attend in person must demonstrate proof of vaccination, if you are unable to be vaccinated and your paper is accepted, ASC will arrange for a virtual presentation.

2021 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

**Schedule is tentative and subject to change

Keynote Speakers

A Voice You need to Hear

Joseph Mansky

Breaking Scholar

Joseph Mansky is an assistant professor of English at OU, specializing in early modern literature. His current book-in-progress, Seeds of Sedition: Plays, Libels, and the Public Sphere in Shakespeare’s England, examines how amateur and professional playwrights—including Shakespeare—took part in the seditious and slanderous talk that swirled across the early modern media. He is also writing a literary history of early English republicanism. He has published articles on a range of early modern poets and playwrights in ELH, PMLA, Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Milton Studies, and his work on the circulation of the Catholic libel Leicester’s Commonwealth recently appeared in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. His research has been supported by the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Renaissance Society of America, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Huntington Library.

Prof. Mansky received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to OU, he taught courses at UC Berkeley, the City College of New York (CUNY), and Bard College. For more information, please visit josephmansky.com.

Emma Smith

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford. She has published widely on Shakespeare’s reception in print, performance, and criticism. Her work on the First Folio – the first collected works of Shakespeare – included authenticating a new copy on the Scottish island of Bute. A new edition of her book The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio will be published in 2023 to mark the 400th anniversary of this most famous of publications. She has worked with theatre companies in the UK and USA, as a historical and textual advisor on film and TV, in curating library exhibitions, writing for newspapers and popular magazines. Her podcasts on Shakespeare and other dramatists can be downloaded from podcasts.ox.ac.uk. Her most recent book, This Is Shakespeare, was a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK: it tries to enable readers to see the plays as incomplete, ambiguous texs to think with. She edits the international journal Shakespeare Survey. She is currently working on a new edition of Twelfth Night. Portable Magic: A History of Our Long Love Affair with Books will be published by Penguin (UK) and Pantheon (USA) in spring 2022.

Watch this page for more Keynote and Abstract Information

Accomodations

Visit our Plan Your Visit Page for more information about Staunton and surrounding areas!

For a discounted conference hotel rate call Hotel 24 South!

Whova

Information on Whova coming soon