BSA Bulletin for January and February 2017

6th February 2017

Announcing the annual conferences for 2018, 2019, and 2020

After a rigorous process of application and review, the Events Committee of the BSA is proud to announce the institutions that will host our three upcoming annual conferences and their titles. The 2018 BSA Annual Conference, Shakespeare Studies Today, will take place at Queen’s University Belfast on 14-17 June. Swansea Universitywill host the 2019 conference Shakespeare: Race and Nation, while the 2020 conference Shakespeare in Action will take place at the University of Surrey. We would like to thank all three institutions for the hard work they have invested in their applications, and we look forward to visiting Belfast, Swansea, and Surrey in due course. The Belfast and Swansea BSA conferences will be the first ones to take place in Northern Ireland and in Wales, respectively, which is enormously exciting, as the BSA will have visited all four constituent nations of the United Kingdom by the end of 2019. The Events Committee now invites initial expressions of interest in hosting the 2021 Conference. The Conference Proposal Form can be found on the BSA website http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/conference/ Full information on the upcoming conferences can be found on: www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-conferences-for-2018-2019-and-2020

BSA Summer School for Schoolteachers, The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 3-5 August 2017

The Association and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust are co-organising the first BSA Summer School for Schoolteachers, coordinated by Chris Green (BSA Teaching Trustee) and Nick Walton (SBT Education). The event will be aimed at both English and Drama teachers (from both the Primary and Secondary sectors). The price will be £177 (tbc), and will include tickets to see the Royal Shakespeare Company new productions of Julius Caesarand Antony and Cleopatra, as well as a series of sessions with members of the RSC casts, professional directors, and scholars from the Shakespeare Institute and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. More details about the programme and the booking process will be announced soon. For expressions of interest and other enquiries, please contact Chris Green: cejgreen@hotmail.com

BSA Panels, ‘Shared Futures’, English Association and University English Conference, Newcastle 5-7 July 2017

The BSA invites members—teachers, theatre practitioners, enthusiasts, academics—to participate in a series of three Shakespeare panels we will be running at the Shared Futures conference in Newcastle next summer: ‘Why Shakespeare now?’ (Chair Susan Anderson); Panel 2 ‘Sharing Shakespeare’s Language (workshop chaired by Alison Findlay, Andrew Jarvis and James Harrison-Smith) and Panel 3: Sharing Futures across primary, secondary and university education (Chairs: Chris Green and Karen Eckersal). Further details can be found on the BSA website. The BSA has a number to Bursaries to award to members (especially teachers and theatre practitioners) who wish to contribute to the panels / workshop above and are not in receipt of funding from their institution. For further details please contact Susan Anderson S.Anderson@leedstrinity.ac.uk For more information about the panels see http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/join-our-panels-at-the-shared-futures-conference/  Registration for English: Shared Futures is now open!. You can find the registration form by clicking the booking tab at the top of the conference’s home page at http ://www . englishsharedfutures . uk Early bird rates are available until 30 April, and a limited number of fee-only bursaries for the low- and un-waged is available. The deadline to apply for those is 15 March. 

BSA funding available for conference, events, and other activities

The BSA is able to award small amounts of money to Shakespeare-related education events, academic conferences and other activities taking place in the UK. For more information or to apply for funding, please email the Chair of the Events Committee, Susan Anderson (S.Anderson@leedstrinity.ac.uk) or the Chair of the Education Committee, Sarah Olive (sarah.olive@york.ac.uk).

Teaching Shakespeare 11 out this month!

Teaching Shakespeare 11 will be published this month. Apart from the usual selection of articles for educators and students in all sectors, don’t miss our competition…compete with prizes! We have three copies of the gorgeous publication Colouring Shakespeare with a foreword by Simon Callow to give away to readers. Given that we’re now into double figures in terms of issues, we’re inviting readers to take 10 minutes to answer a short online survey about the magazine to make it even stronger as we go forward: http ://surveymonkey . co . uk/r/JRDLVHL  With huge thanks in advance from the Education Committee.

CALLS FOR PAPERS

CFP: Hamlet and Emotions: Then and Now, University of Western Australia, 10-11 April 2017

Ian McEwan’s recent novel Nutshell (2016), in which Hamlet is an unborn foetus, is only the latest in a line of appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays stretching back to 1600. Hamlet itself stretches beyond the seventeenth century, drawing on sources that date back to twelfth-century Denmark, and referring within itself to relics of older drama that Shakespeare may have seen as a boy in Stratford. Hamlet looks both backwards and forwards in time. The play also covers a remarkable range of emotional states, including anger, love, hatred, grief, melancholy and despair. Indeed, Hamlet stages a plethora of emotional practices: a funeral and a marriage, a vindictive ghost in purgatory, a young woman whose mental equilibrium has been dislodged by the murder of her father by her own erstwhile lover, an inscrutable monarch under suspicion of murder, a couple of mordantly cheerful gravediggers, and a young prince back from university and grieving for his deceased father. This symposium invites new readings of the play, focusing on any aspect of its emotional life in the widest sense. We envisage papers from a range of disciplines and points of view, which may contribute to any of the Centre’s four research programs – Meanings, Change, Performance or Shaping the Modern. Some possible areas of discussion are mentioned below, but they are by no means exclusive. We aim at producing a book proposal, so completed papers ready for publication will save time when approaching a publisher. International visitors include Kevin Curran (University of Lausanne), Richard Meek (University of Hull), Kathryn Prince (University of Ottawa), and Naya Tsentourou (University of Exeter) More information on: http ://www . historyofemotions . org . au/events/hamlet-and-emotions-then-and-now/ Please send proposals for 20-minute papers, including a title and presenter details, to Paul Megna (paul.megna.uwa.edu.au) by 28 February 2017.

CFP: Offensive Shakespeare conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 24th May 2017

This conference is sponsored by the BSA. Keynote speakers include Professor Douglas Lanier (University of New Hampshire) and Dr Peter Kirwan (University of Nottingham). ‘Outrage as BBC bosses “use Shakespeare to push pro-immigration agenda”’. This was a headline in The Daily Express on 25th April 2016, after the BBC included what has become known as the ‘Immigration Speech’ from Sir Thomas More in a programme celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. From Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler expurgating passages from their Family Shakespeare, through campaigns in the early 20th century to remove The Merchant of Venice from American classrooms, to this recent ‘outrage’, people have been offended by what Shakespeare wrote or by the uses to which others have put him. But what is it that offends us and how do we deal with it? What makes Shakespeare and his appropriations such a sensitive issue? Full details on abstract submission are available here: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/cfp-offensive-shakespeare/

CFP: Shakespeare, Technology, Media, Performance, University of Exeter, 24 June 2017

This conference will examine the recent significant changes in how Shakespeare’s plays are performed and disseminated through old and new technologies and media. At one end of the spectrum, through performances in reconstructed early modern theatres, early modern performance technologies have re-entered mainstream culture. The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is only the most recent example of how early modern technologies and the plays written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and successors have returned to the cutting edge of present-day theatre. At the other end of the spectrum, the current production of The Tempest by the RSC in partnership with Intel exemplifies how mainstream theatre companies have, in the wake of productions by smaller companies experimenting with digital and virtual theatre, embraced digital media. Full information on: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/cfp-shakespeare-technology-media-performance/

This conference is organised and sponsored by Shakespeare Bulletin to mark the end of Pascale Aebischer’s term as General Editor of the journal. Keynote speakers include Courtney Lehmann (University of the Pacific), Ramona Wray (Queen’s University Belfast), and Pascale Aebischer (University of Exeter).

We call for papers on any of the following or related topics in relation to the performance of Shakespeare and/or early modern drama:

–        reimagined performance technologies in reconstructed playhouses and Practice-as-Research

–        intermedial performance practices

–        social media performance

–        theatre broadcast technology and spectatorship

–        television and feature film adaptation

–        digital objects and digital media

–        technology of the classroom

Paper proposals of up to 300 words, accompanied by a short biographical statement, should be submitted to Emma Bessent (E.Bessent@exeter.ac.uk) by Monday 27 February. Up to 6 postgraduate bursaries covering the conference attendance fee plus a standard contribution of £50 to assist with travel expenses are available to encourage contributions to the debate by a new generation of scholars. Please specify in your proposal if you wish to apply for one of these. Early submissions will be preferred.

CFP: Humour, History, and Methodology: A Multidisciplinary and Trans-Professional Enquiry, Durham University, 26-28 July 2017

The Humours of the Past (HOP) Network brings together researchers and practitioners with a mutual stake in understanding, interpreting and communicating humour of various kinds from particular times and cultural contexts. The study of humour as an approach to history – and history as an approach to humour – is a developing area of enquiry. However, there has been relatively little cross-disciplinary reflection on the methods researchers use to identify and understand humour from the past, and on what may be similar across disparate cultural materials. Furthermore, academic researchers have had only limited opportunities to discuss their modes of enquiry with practitioners who also have a professional stake in interpreting humour from the past, such as actors, directors, curators, and translators. To this end, HOP is holding a conference at Durham University, 26-28 July 2017 to encourage researchers and practitioners to share approaches. In addition to individual papers, there will be three roundtable discussions, exploring the verbal, visual and performative ‘translation’ of historical humour to contemporary audiences. Keynote speakers include Em. Prof. Conal Condren (UNSW), Mr Phil Porter (playwright), and Prof. Indira Ghose (Fribourg). Full information on welcome topics on: https://humoursofthepast . wordpress . com/Please submit abstracts (300 words max) to humoursofthepast@gmail.com by 1 March 2017. We particularly welcome submissions of coherent panels of 3 linked papers. Follow us on Twitter @historichumour. Organisers: Daniel Derrin (Durham University) and Hannah Burrows (University of Aberdeen)

CFP: Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir (2017): Shakespeare and Africa

This issue would like to explore the relationship between Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, that of Shakespeare but also his contemporaries, and the representation of Africa, or, from a contextual viewpoint, the perception of the African continent in early modern England. The issue will also discuss 19^th-21^st c. re-writings, appropriations and adaptations of Shakespeare by African and African-American writers, stage directors and film directors. Full details and guidelines are available here: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/shakespeare-in-africa/

MEMBERS’ NEWS AND EVENTS

We are pleased to advertise news and activities by our members and other Shakespeare associations. If you would like to advertise a Shakespeare-related activity, please email our Membership Officer, José A. Pérez Díez, at J.A.PerezDiez@leeds.ac.uk. Items below are not affiliated with or endorsed by the BSA – please use individual contact details for more information.

Sidelights on Shakespeare. ‘Shakespeare in Performance’: “Every man look o’er his part. For the short and the long is, our play is preferred”, 25 February 2017, Humanities Studio, University of Warwick

This year we have transformed Sidelights on Shakespeare. On Saturday 25th February 2017 we will be holding a one-day event under the broad title of ‘Shakespeare in Performance’. Sponsored by the Humanities Research Centre, we will be bringing together respected academics and post-graduate researchers to celebrate the current work being done in the field of Shakespeare in performance. Confirmed Speakers include Dr Jaq Bessell (Director of Studies, Guildford School of Acting), Professor Tony Howard and Dr Steve Purcell (University of Warwick), and Tim Supple (Artistic Director, Dash Arts). The event is free and includes refreshments, though are asking you to register as numbers will be limited.  Booking is now open and delegate places proving very popular. For further information please email Stephanie on S.A.Tillotson@warwick.ac.uk or visit the Humanities Research Centre website at: http ://www2 . warwick . ac . uk/fac/arts/hrc/seminars/sos/

“Why Does Cardenio Matter?”: A talk by Gary Taylor at the Richmond Shakespeare Society, Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham, 15 March 2017, 7:45pm.

Professor Gary Taylor talks about the lost Shakespeare-and-Fletcher play The History of Cardenio: what we know about it: how we know it: and why does it matter? If you’re interested in Shakespeare or theatre in general, or the Renaissance in England and Spain, take this rare opportunity to hear one of the world’s leading Shakespearean scholars speaking in the UK. He will describe his own long scholarly investigation, the creation of his reconstruction and the theatrical collaborations that have tested and refined it. And his talk serves as prologue to the UK premiere of his reconstruction, opening at the Mary Wallace Theatre the following Saturday. The talk will be free but ticketed; please visit this link: http ://www . richmondshakespeare . org . uk/index . php/news/article/why_does_cardenio_matter/

The History of Cardenio by William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Gary Taylor, Richmond Shakespeare Society, Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham, 18-25 March 2017, 7:45pm.

The UK premiere of the most authentic vision of the lost Shakespeare play The History of Cardenio. Leading scholar Gary Taylor has made a lively, credible, theatrically viable reconstruction of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s 1612 play. Cardenio loves Lucinda. When he tells his friend Fernando about her, Fernando loves Lucinda too. But Fernando is already as good as married to Violante, a farmer’s daughter. So, to marry Lucinda, Fernando must be doubly false and betray the two people who are dearest to him. One will come close to death, another will go mad. Quesada, the old schoolmaster, has read too many stories of chivalry and determines to become a wandering knight. With his houseboy, Sancho, as his squire, he takes to the road to kill dragons and save damsels. There will be confrontations and absolutions but will everyone come out happy? Will everyone come out sane? RSS and Cutpurse present the British premiere of the most authentic vision of the lost play. One of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars, Gary Taylor, collaborates posthumously with Shakespeare and Fletcher to re-create their adaptation of Don Quixote in a script that’s passionate, romantic and immensely funny. More information and bookings: http ://www . richmondshakespeare . org . uk/index . php/productions/production/the_history_of_cardenio/# . WJCwJE1XV3c

After Shakespeare play readings, Birmingham.

After Shakespeare holds weekly drop-in Shakespeare play readings at the Birmingham & Midland Institute in the centre of Birmingham (Tuesdays, 6.30-9.00pm), where around 15 people meet to read, discuss, and generally enjoy Shakespeare’s plays. We are currently reading our 6th Shakespeare play, Henry IV Part 1, anyone interested is welcome to come along; please drop Frank Bramwell an email at aftershakespeareuk@gmail.com. After Shakespeare also holds workshops aimed at increasing enjoyment of Shakespeare, as well as writing and performing new plays inspired by the work of William Shakespeare. Details of all our activities can be found at www . aftershakespeare . co . uk

BSA Conferences for 2018, 2019 and 2020

4th February 2017

The BSA is proud to announce its next the locations, institutional partners and themes of its next three conferences:

• Shakespeare Studies Today, 14-17 June 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast
• Shakespeare: Race and Nation, July 2019, Swansea University
• Shakespeare in Action, July 2020, University of Surrey

The BSA conference is the largest regular Shakespeare conference in the United Kingdom, bringing together researchers, teachers, and theatre practitioners from all over the world to share the latest work on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. From 2018, the BSA conference will become an annual event, having previously been held every two years. The BSA is delighted that high demand has enabled us to increase the frequency of this, our flagship event. BSA conferences include a wide range of sessions and events, including academic lectures by internationally renowned Shakespeare critics, talks by celebrated practitioners and practical workshops. The BSA welcomes contributions from scholars, students, teachers, theatre practitioners, community workers and other professions with a shared interest in Shakespeare.

The CFP for the 2018 conference will be released soon, but in the meantime, please contact events@britishshakespeare.ws if you want to know more about any of our upcoming conferences.

We want your opinion on Teaching Shakespeare!

2nd February 2017

Our Education Network magazine, Teaching Shakespeare is seeking feedback. Even if you do not know the publication well, please consider taking some time to fill out this extremely short survey:

GO TO SURVEY

Shakespeare Lives in Korea

24th January 2017

By Sarah Olive

In November, I had the pleasure of participating in several British Council Korea events to round out the year-long Shakespeare Lives project, marking the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

This involved chairing the Sonnet Exchange on 24^th November at the Blue Square arts venue. One of several such events facilitated globally by the British Council in 2016, my responsibility was to gain some lively insights from the poets, Bosun Shim and Ben Wilkinson, and artists, Sung Goo Won and Mark Stafford, and into their choice of two sonnets and the processes involved in collaboratively reimagining them across two different cultural and linguistic contexts and several hundred miles. Bosun had been paired with Mark, working on sonnet 145 ‘Those lips that Love’s own hand did make’ to respond to the poem’s problematisation of hatred (even affected, even momentary, even joking – the sonnet seems to include an autobiographical pun using the name of Shakespeare’s wife Hathaway) in light of divisive political situations affecting the UK and US in 2016, Brexit and the American presidential elections. Once deemed a pretty piece of Shakespeare’s juvenilia by critics, this creative team uncovered a dystopian vision of relationships – romantic and national. In doing so, they neatly inverted the tradition of sonnets that Shakespeare would have been familiar to Shakespeare as a young man being to praise great men, to question a politics (sexual or political) of hate. Sung Goo and Ben opted for sonnet 113, ’Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind’, part of the sonnet cycle addressed to a beloved young man and exploring themes of love, absence, and the effect of these on sensory perception. This second creative combination preserved and further foregrounded the sonnet’s toying with the word ‘true’ as meaning both devoted and real, both faithful and actual. Their re-visioning of the sonnet verbally and visually foregrounds the way in which a loved one’s physical absence is belied by the mind’s eye’s seeming determination to discover that person in all surroundings, complicating binaries such as with and without, before and after. In this way, both retellings of the sonnets achieved the British Council’s aim to go beyond merely illustrated rewritings and to emphasise the narrative elements found within the individual sonnets and spanning multiple works within the 154 Shakespeare sonnets first printed in 1609. Asking this quartet to put into speech the intangible workings of their readings and re-makings seemed an even more daunting prospect to them than the task of taking Shakespeare’s words and putting them into their own tongues and pen strokes. However, one aspect of their endeavors that made a strong impression of me was the range of their previous experiences with Shakespeare – from having studied him at school to only getting acquainted with his writing (even if his reputation preceded him) this year. To me, looking from the outside of the process in, the Korean Sonnet Exchange experience spoke of it never being too late to meet Shakespeare and there being no one, right way to get to know him. This is particularly so because we can take advantage of a never-ending, not-yet-staling dialogue between Shakespeare’s works and worlds and our own.

Like the sonnets chosen for the exchange, hate, love and separation were at the forefront of another favourite experience I had during the week. The internationally-renowned Korean theatre company Yohangza gave me the singular privilege of observing the rehearsals for their upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet. I am writing this post from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Other Place foyer in Stratford-upon-Avon, a town where I’ve lived for almost a decade (happily this important anniversary for me and Shakespeare is coming up in 2017, to fill the void left by the 400^th celebrations). Apart from a trip to the staff canteen to sample the delicious food that fuels the casts and crews of this national theatre, this is as close as I get to the everyday life and creative process as staff meet up and the occasional rack of costumes rolls across the floor. I have been mesmerised by seeing the actors of the Vietnamese National Theatre in Hanoi rehearsing – but a local text, not Shakespeare, so there was minimal chance of admitting me into the rehearsal room resulting in any interference. Yohangza were singularly generous and relaxed in welcoming me into their busy day: introductions abounded, as did cups of deliciously warming ginseng tea, an organic apple deftly peeled by Juliet’s Nurse (which had me wondering whether the actor was always this solicitous and motherly, or was a practitioner of Stainslavsky’s method acting) and the sort of sugary snacks I remembered being a staple of student Shakespeare productions during my PhD studies. I was made to feel further at home by my inclusion into a raffle prize-draw to keep motivation and company bonding high and by being slipped into a cast and crew hoodie, with the play’s title emblazoned on its back. I relish the independence and solitude I can fashion for myself several times a week as an academic, but I did feel a pang of jealousy at Yohangza’s enviable communal and collaborative workplace spirit – even if I was told by the producer that actors work the kind of all-absorbing, long hours familiar to many academics. The whole team sat around a wide, u-shaped bank of desks, some actors just-audibly memorising lines from their scripts, while scenes played out in the playing space after a warm-up game of keepie-uppie with a paper cup (I was assured this game is rife on Korean university campuses around exam time too) and actors patting down their muscles to get the circulation going. These were not just any scenes, but some of the most famous scenes in theatre history and literature ever written in English (and here translated into Korean): the prologue that dooms these most famous lovers as star-crossed, here delivered by the actor playing the nurse – a welcome change from the male, monastic-looking choruses of my childhood theatre-going; the ball where Romeo and Juliet meet, cleverly lit here by a single candle which obscured the other characters and threw the focus solely onto the smitten teenagers; the balcony scene, where the actors, at first coy, presented a refreshingly childish, unmannered intimacy, sometimes crouching on all fours to converse; the fight where Mercutio is fatally wounded. Even though there were still three weeks to go until curtains up, the production had nailed the sense of violence simmering beneath a wafer-thin surface calm in Verona: weapons were always ready to hand and their wielders quick to use them, across the generations, from young boys to stately fathers. I loved watching the care and ingenuity with which actors approximated the experience they will have on stage – jumping and stepping on the spot to replicate the traversing of levels and timings they will perform on stage and simulating an elaborate parasol with an ordinary umbrella, polystyrene tray and scarf. My only regret from the day was that I will not be able to catch this cast, famed across stage and screen in Korea, playing out the full production in Seoul this December.

I can’t end without a few words of reflection and comparison on the aspect of Shakespearean theatre companies that I know best:…meals. The Royal Shakespeare Company canteen is known for its menus celebrating various national cuisines. I’ve had perfect, Polish-inspired pierogi (boiled or fried dumplings). Can I suggest that the kitchen in Shakespeare’s hometown takes inspiration from Blue Square for some Seoul food? Lunch was a crystal clear soup with fishcake (‘eomuk’), lip-smacking sticky rice with seasonal mushrooms, with probiotic yoghurt, fried egg, and – of course – kimchi on the side. This arts centre, its practitioners and the Shakespeare they were performing testified to the fact that a nutritious, balanced diet, unlike the unhealthy obsession of Twelfth Night’s Andrew Aguecheek with eating an excessive quantity of beef, does no harm to wit.

Join our panels at the ‘Shared Futures’ conference!

29th November 2016

The BSA invites members – teachers, theatre practitioners, enthusiasts, academics – to participate in a series of three Shakespeare panels we will be running at the Shared Futures conference in Newcastle from 5th to 7th July 2017:

• ‘Why Shakespeare Now?’ (Chair: Susan Anderson)
• ‘Sharing Shakespeare’s Language (Chairs: Alison Findlay, Andrew Jarvis and James Harriman-Smith)
• ‘Sharing Futures across Primary, Secondary and University Education’ (Chairs: Chris Green and Karen Eckersall).

Further details about each panel can be found below, including contact details for each chair (click on the highlighted name). If you would like to take part in a panel, please get in touch!

For more information about the Shared Futures conference, visit: http://www.englishsharedfutures.uk/

Why Shakespeare Now?

Chair Susan Anderson

This panel will examine the continuing relevance – or otherwise! – of Shakespeare in literary studies and wider culture. It will consider questions raised by Shakespeare’s continued status as a cornerstone of our shared cultural heritage. For instance, does Shakespeare’s ubiquity help and/or hinder literary studies within education and broader society? What are the ways that the ongoing importance of Shakespeare can be exclusionary and/or inclusive? Is the dominance of Shakespeare a self-sustaining phenomenon or a historical accident? Panelists are invited to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of working with Shakespeare, of what they consider ‘Shakespeare’ to mean, and how and why Shakespeare is useful to them in their professional lives.

Sharing Shakespeare’s Language

Chairs: Alison Findlay, Andrew Jarvis and James Harriman-Smith

AHRC Shakespeare’s Language Project: Jonathan Culpeper, Dawn Archer, Jane Demmen and Sean Murphy

This workshop will study examples of Shakespeare’s language in action in the sixteenth, eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will begin by using modern practical drama exercises to explore Shakespeare’s precise use of word sounds, rhythm, pace, as experienced through the embodied human voice today. We will then turn our attention to the past, first with a brief demonstration of how eighteenth-century actors may have worked their way through Shakespeare’s scripts, and then with a look at Shakespeare’s language in its original context of early modern England. This final section will introduce the AHRC funded project on Shakespeare’s Language (Lancaster University) which uses corpus linguistics to illuminate what resonances Shakespeare’s choice of words held for early modern readers, listeners and fellow artists. What associations did each word hold for Shakespeare’s contemporaries? How common or unusual were such words? We will focus particularly on some of the words used in the speeches workshopped in Part I and will suggest ways in which both these techniques could be used by actors, teachers, and academics.

Sharing Futures across Primary, Secondary and University Education

Chairs: Chris Green and Karen Eckersall

This workshop invites participation from teachers of English and drama to share and develop ways of connecting students’ experiences of Shakespeare in primary, secondary and university classrooms. Prospero’s questioning of Miranda, ‘What see’st thou else / In the dark backward and abyss of time?’ prompts us to consider the differences and continuities for students looking back over their educational career, while for primary pupils, encountering Shakespeare’s text is like exploring the ‘brave new world’ of the island for the first time. What can we, as teachers, learn from each others’ experiences and from the multiple perspectives of our students and pupils? Participants are invited to offer examples of work and teaching methods; reflections on how students’ experience of Shakespeare is shaped by their past education, present lives, and future goals; or simply to join the discussion. Since Shakespeare’s future lies with young people, we aim to build networks across educational levels, aware that ‘What’s past is prologue, what to come / In yours and my discharge’ (2.1.249-50).

CFP: Offensive Shakespeare

6th October 2016

Call for papers

Offensive Shakespeare conference

Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

24^th May 2017

Sponsored by the British Shakespeare Association

Keynote speakers: Prof. Douglas Lanier (University of New Hampshire)

Dr Peter Kirwan (Nottingham University)

‘Outrage as BBC bosses “use Shakespeare to push pro-immigration agenda”’. This was a headline in The Daily Express on 25^th April 2016, after the BBC included what has become known as the ‘Immigration Speech’ from Sir Thomas More in a programme celebrating the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. From Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler expurgating passages from their Family Shakespeare, through campaigns in the early 20^th century to remove The Merchant of Venice from American classrooms, to this recent ‘outrage’, people have been offended by what Shakespeare wrote or by the uses to which others have put him. But what is it that offends us and how do we deal with it? What makes Shakespeare and his appropriations such a sensitive issue? We welcome 200-word abstracts for 20-minute papers that might address the following (or related) topics: 

• Case studies of individuals or groups taking offence at Shakespeare’s texts.
• Examples of Shakespearean rewritings aimed at addressing ‘offensive’ issues.
• Shakespearean plays or performances which have been banned, censored, or campaigned against.
• Debates around removing Shakespeare from educational curricula, or making the study of his work mandatory.
• Appropriations of Shakespeare by anti-democratic or repressive movements (e.g. ‘Nazi Shakespeare’, ‘racist Shakespeare’).
• Iconoclastic uses of Shakespeare that ‘offend’ against established orthodoxies.
• Adaptations of Shakespeare into popular genres or idioms.
• Means of teaching or tackling plays which include morally, ethically, or politically problematic passages (e.g. The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, The Merchant of Venice).
• Uses of Shakespeare in propaganda, inflammatory speeches, or heated political debates.
• Authorship controversies.

Thanks to a generous grant from the BSA, we are able to offer two bursaries of £75 each to assist postgraduate students with the costs of attending the conference. Email the organisers if you would like to apply for one of these.

Please submit abstracts to Monika Smialkowska (monika.smialkowska@northumbria.ac.uk) or Edmund King (edmund.king@open.ac.uk) by 15^th February 2017.   To register, visit https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2017/05/offensive-shakespeare-conference/.

Teaching Shakespeare 10 is out!

30th September 2016

I’m pleased to announce that the tenthissue of Teaching Shakespeare, with articles about Bardolph’s Box, Shakespeare in Korea and much else, is now available for free download.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE PDF

You can read back issues of Teaching Shakespeare elsewhere on this website.

First Impressions: Teaching Shakespeare with a Purpose by Ayanna Thompson and Laura Turchi

27th September 2016

This post is part of a series of brief, ‘first impression’ reviews of books on Shakespeare in Education. Look out for others posted to the BSA’s Education Network Blog.

15-minute reviewer: Paul Young

In a nutshell, this book is about:

Moving the teaching of Shakespeare away from the traditional teacher-expert led method, which often includes attempts to use the plays as a vehicle to teach a huge range of social/historical/political issues at shallow face value. Instead, it suggests a collaborative student led approach, allowing students to discover their interpretations and every day relevance in Shakespeare for themselves.

Who would like it?

Anybody looking for engaging ways to teach Shakespeare at pretty much every academic level.

Who wouldn’t like it?

People looking for a quick and easy classroom resource guide.

Best feature?

The book contains advice for every part of the teaching process, from idea inception right through to meaningful assessment, meaning it is a very comprehensive guide for how you can rethink planning.

What’s missing?

It is very much a guide aimed at those who are looking to reinvent the way they teach Shakespeare. There’s not that much for people inexperienced in teaching Shakespeare, and it lacks information on the plays if you’re not confident on content.

Our new honorary fellows!

22nd September 2016

At our Hull conference, we awarded honorary fellowships to John Barton and Ann Thompson. The following post gives a little more information about each new fellow.

John Barton

For over fifty years John Barton has been at the forefront of Shakespearean thinking and performance. When he joined Peter Hall as co-founder of the RSC, they began a journey which utterly transformed the theatre’s thinking on how Shakespearean verse should be spoken. After Peter Hall left the Company, John continued there as both an Associate Director and as its leader in the further teaching and understanding of that exploration. He is unique. He combines what no-one else of his generation has been able to achieve. The co-existence of scholarship with the understanding and practise of concrete theatrical release. So many, many Directors and actors have been transformed and transported by his passion and perception. He is undoubtedly one of the greats of Shakespearean theatre. His influence is unquantifiable.

Ann Thompson

Professor Ann Thompson has produced a wealth of pioneering work in making feminist approaches an essential dimension of Shakespeare studies in the academy.

Her New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of The Taming of the Shrew (1984), produced when she was at Liverpool University, was groundbreaking in the ways it maintained a tradition of scrupulous research and scholarship in Shakespeare editing, going back to the work of figures like John Dover Wilson, C Walter Hodges, Kenneth Muir, and yet broke away from that by prioritising the problem of the ‘barbarous and disgusting’ quality of the taming plot and offering a relevatory reading of Katherina’s final speech and previous critical and theatrical responses to it. Ann’s subsequent work as a General Editor of Arden Shakespeare, including the three-text edition of Hamlet, edited with Neil Taylor, has not only provided a model of excellent editorial practice in itself, but has been an inspiring source of editorial excellence in others, bringing an unprecedented number of women into the field of editing Shakespeare.

Professor Ann Thompson’s work on Shakespeare’s language, starting with Shakespeare, Meaning and Metaphor, co-authored with her husband John and ongoing (with the 2012 article on metonymy in Henry V) represents a body of work that has informed academic researchers, teachers and performers. Professor Thompson’s enthusiasm for watching and learning from Shakespeare in performance, on stage and on film has led to an unwavering support for practitioners, ranging from endeavours at the Globe and the Sam Wanamaker theatre in the UK to sitting under rugs and blankets to watch a Czech version of I and II Henry IV at the World Shakespeare Congress in Prague.

To find out more about the honorary fellows of the BSA, visit out fellows pages.

Reports from the Hull BSA Conference

20th September 2016

This post has been prepared as an archive of the 2016 BSA Conference at the University of Hull. Enjoy!

Shakespearean Transformations:

Death, Life, and Afterlives

University of Hull, 8-11 September 2016

Key Events

Keynote Speakers

• Susan Bassnett (University of Warwick), ‘Shakespeare and Translation’
• Stuart Sillars, ‘Shakespeare Illustration and Interpretation’
• Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex), ‘Shakespeare’s Equivocations’
• Michael Neill (University of Auckland), ‘Peremptory Nullification’: Death and King Lear
• Claudia Olk (Free University of Berlin), ‘Shakespeare’s Endgames’
• Barrie Rutter (Northern Broadsides), ‘Northern Voices: Performing Classical Work in Non-Velvet Spaces’
• Tiffany Stern (University of Oxford), ‘Shakespeare: Playwright and Ballad-Monger’
• Richard Wilson (Kingston University), ‘Wheel of Fire: Memory, Mourning and Memorial Theatre’

Award Ceremony for the BSA Honorary Fellowships 2016

• Ann Thompson, Emeritus Professor, King’s College London
• John Barton, Emeritus Director and Co-Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company

Book Launch of Inspired by Shakespeare

Programme

DOWNLOAD AS PDF

Bursaries

The BSA was pleased to provide bursaries to its 2016 conference at the University of Hull to the following postgraduate students and teachers on vulnerable contracts:

• Katarzyna Burzyńska
• Abraham Davies
• Gabriella Edelstein
• Wael Ellouz
• Michael Graham
• Shawna Guenther
• Ronan Hatfull
• Florence Hazrat
• Jeremy Johnson
• Sabrina Laskowska-Hinz
• Gemma Miller
• José A. Perez Diez
• Eva Spisiakova
• Peter Sutton
• Miranda Fay Thomas

By clicking on the highlighted names in this list, you can read the award-holder’s report on the conference. The reports are accompanied by photos taken throughout the event.

Twitter

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Conference Reports and Photos

Katarzyna Burzyńska

I am a young PhD holder at the AMU Faculty of English in Poznań, Poland. I was awarded the British Shakespeare Association bursary for the costs incurred during the conference in Hull in September 2016. At the time of the conference I only worked part time at my university in Poland and because of that could not apply for a full refund of the conference costs. So the bursary turned out to be a great help. It definitely helped me cover the costs of travelling in the UK. Both travel and stay in the UK are quite costly for a young researcher from Poland so I am very grateful I was selected. The conference itself was a very inspiring and thought-provoking academic gathering. I met many interesting scholars who gave me very valuable feedback on my research. What is also very important to me is the fact that I managed to advertise the European Shakespeare Research Association conference in Gdańsk in July 2017. I will be co-convening one of the seminars during the conference and the BSA conference enabled me to present my seminar to other Shakespeare scholars and invite them to Gdańsk.

Shawna Guenther

I wish to thank the British Shakespeare Association for granting me a bursary to attend this year’s conference in Hull. The bursary helped to compensate for the weak Canadian dollar as I travelled to and within England. My intention in presenting a paper and attending the panels and plenaries of the BSA conference was to position myself within the, specifically, Renaissance Studies academic community. I am eager to prove myself professionally and to construct a network of colleagues (I even met a few of my “idols”). My attendance at the conference was entirely enjoyable. I not only met scholars with whom I can now communicate and collaborate, but I was made to realize the importance of co-operating with those in other disciplines, and with educators, theatre theorists and practitioners, and non-academic contributors. Further, the collegial atmosphere of the conference was a welcome change from some of the competitively abrasive environments of other academic conferences I have recently attended. Thank you. I look forward to the 2018 BSA Conference.

Eva Spisiakova

I am currently a doctoral student in Translation studies, working with Czech and Slovak versions of Shakespeare’s sonnets as my main corpus. While I receive support in everything related to the sociolinguistic aspects of this research, I am rarely offered feedback on the parts of my work that relate to Shakespeare and English renaissance in general. Shakespearean conferences and particularly one as large as this year’s BSA are of invaluable importance in having my project critically evaluated in a friendly and open environment, and in creating a network with other students and professionals I otherwise would not have a chance to meet. My own presentation received extremely helpful and constructive feedback with several intriguing conversations following it in the next few days of the conference. In addition to that, I exchanged contacts with several other Shakespearean scholars working with Czech and Slovak languages and that I would not be able to find without this opportunity. The 2016 BSA conference surprised me with a large number of participants as well as the level of professionalism with which it was organised, and yet it never lost the personal and very inviting atmosphere that Shakespearean conferences always have.

Professor Sir Stanley Wells, honoured by Councillor Sean Chaytor, Lord Mayor of Kingston upon Hull and Admiral of the Humber

Ronan Hatfull

I participated at this year’s British Shakespeare Association Conference, held at the University of Hull, in three ways. Firstly, I presented a paper on the work of pedagogic rapper Devon Glover and his work, which adapts Shakespeare’s sonnets into rap music, second as a poet, reading my winning entry in the BSA’s Inspired by Shakespeare publication and, finally, in a seminar on ‘Intertextual Shakespeare’, where I discussed my doctoral research into the history and evolution of the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

The conference was invaluable to this research, offering my ideas exposure to leading experts in the field of adaptation and translation studies, and forging new connections with academics such as Susan Bassnett and Jeffrey Robert Wilson. My understanding of the term ‘adaptation’ was itself reconfigured by Bassnett’s illuminating plenary on ‘Shakespeare and Translation’.

The feedback received on the Devon Glover paper was indispensable to my interest in publishing this work in future journals and pursuing it more widely after completing my PhD. Similarly, the discussion as part of the seminar reinvigorated my central ideas about the Reduced Shakespeare Company, particularly Wilson’s encouragement to look more deeply into notions of Shakespearean ‘fan fiction’. This was, in short, the best organised and most efficiently run conference I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. I cannot recommend it highly enough to PhD students aspiring to a career in academia.

Florence Hazrat

I am extremely grateful to the BSA for generously offering me a graduate bursary to attend this year’s conference in Hull. The panels were rich and diverse, allowing me to locate my research in current developments: particularly papers on music in Shakespeare offered fruitful new insights and permitted me to participate in lively discussions. Preparation for my own paper helped me to crystallize the argument of one of my PhD chapters, which will stand me in good stead when articulating a book proposal based on my thesis. Both during and after the conference, I had ample opportunity to discuss my work with established scholars, inspiring new possible angles, as well as spreading knowledge about my field of interest. The conference created a relaxed but focussed atmosphere in which to liase and make contacts with both scholars both known and unknown. The mixture of young and established scholars produced a dynamic and generous framework in which I felt happy to approach people and be approached. The conference has definitely assisted me in creating chances for further cooperation. It was also key in securing me a contribution to The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music to which Professor Christopher Wilson invited me, based on my conference proposal. During the conference, we had the opportunity to touch base and discuss the chapter, which has sharpened and nuanced my writing of it.

José A. Pérez Díez

The year 2016 has been incredibly rich and productive in terms of the quality and the sheer number of academic symposia and conferences in offer all around the world, and indeed in the United Kingdom. I have attended many of them, though it has been impossible—financially and logistically—to make it to all the ones I really wanted to attend. The high registration fees charged at some particular conferences have meant that economic means had to be stretched to make the most of the ephemerides. Financial limitations are particularly troublesome for an early career researcher such as myself, with a family to look after. The research allowance granted very generously by my institution, the University of Leeds, has enabled me to take part in some very fine academic events this year, but it had run out by the time the BSA conference was due to happen. It was with enormous gratitude that I received one of the bursaries offered to postgraduate students and early career researchers by the British Shakespeare Association. The BSA conference at the University of Hull was, by far, the most valuable, enjoyable, and intellectually stimulating conference that I have attended this year. The enormous quality of the plenary sessions, the very high standards of the individual panels, and the characteristically warm hospitality of Yorkshire made the BSA conference 2016 an unforgettable occasion.

A Post-It note spotted in the conference bathrooms…

Gemma Miller

This was my first experience of a BSA conference and I found the experience both rewarding and enjoyable. I chaired a panel on the Friday morning and presented a paper on the Saturday morning, as well as attending numerous plenaries, panels and informal gatherings. A truly international event, the conference provided me with a valuable opportunity to meet and talk with people from institutions across the globe. This included PhD students in a similar situation to me, with whom I was able to share experiences of supervision, research and writing-up. But more importantly, it enabled me to meet academics whose work I had followed and admired for several years. My own panel was extremely well attended, and there was a wonderful synergy to the three papers being presented. This meant that the question and answer session was constructive for all of us, and I particularly benefitted from the expertise of some extremely experienced audience members, whose observations were invaluable for my ongoing research. Since the conference I have been in contact with a number of new contacts via email and look forward to meeting up with them again at the next available opportunity. Thank you to the BSA for enabling me to enrich my studies and make some exciting new contacts and friends.

Peter Sutton

I would like to use this opportunity to thank everyone on the British Shakespeare Association committee for their generosity in providing me with a bursary to attend this year’s conference. It was a truly wonderful conference which allowed so many people from different walks of life and with varying interests to meet and discuss Shakespeare in a friendly, welcoming and well-organised environment. It was a particular thrill for me to present at a BSA conference as it was in Stirling two years ago that I finalised my PhD proposal with my supervisor at what was my first conference that I had ever attended. It was wonderful to be able to meet so many like-minded academics not only those with established careers, but also those contemporary with me with whom I could discuss ideas about my PhD and the future of academia. It was inspiring not only to attend so many varied papers, but also to take part in workshops and watch live performances and recitals. The conference reminds us all that Shakespeare is both a dramatist of the page and stage. My thesis looks at Jonson in both these contexts, and it was wonderful to be able to hear about both of these aspects of reception. The conference also inspired me to visit Hull next year for their City of Culture programme. Thank you once again and I look forward to 2018!

Miranda Fay Thomas

This year’s British Shakespeare Association conference was the first one I had been to, and I was so impressed by the experience that I am already looking forward to returning in 2017. The bursary to attend the conference gave me the opportunity to present my research to a variety of academics in my field, who offered excellent advice and thoughtful questions. There was a very collegiate feeling among all the delegates – one of the keynote speakers approached me after my paper to give further comments! – and it certainly helped me develop my ideas and confidence as an early career researcher. The 2016 BSA conference gave me the opportunity to consider new research questions, with the variety of panels and plenaries on offer, as well as allowing me to meet both graduate students and established academics and discuss future work as well as exchange professional advice. It also allowed me to see a production of the rarely-performed Mucedorus for the first time in my life: an invaluable theatrical experience which will inspire me to continue my interest in Shakespeare and his contemporaries from a practice-based stance.

The fantastic Hull conference team (L to R: Richard Meek, Jason Lawrence, Ann Kaegi, Pavel Drabek) and former chari of the BSA, Stuart Hampton-Reeves at The Deep for the conference dinner.