SHAKESPEAREAN CONFIGURATIONS

University of Montpellier (France),
Wednesday 29 September to Friday 1 October 2010

Shakespearean Configurations is a follow-up from last year’s conference held at the
University of York (UK) during which participants took a fresh look at
configurations—and reconfigurations—of Shakespeare from the first quartos to the
most recent visual incarnations. They also offered new materials and new approaches
for studying the packaging of the plays and poems through time, between cultures and
across media.
The theme of last year’s conference was prompted by two sweeping
developments in Shakespeare studies: the sustained attack on the idea of an authentic,
original text produced by a single, isolated author; and a corresponding attention to
the reformulation and assimilation of Shakespeare’s texts in cultures very different
from the one in which they were created.
Participants in this year’s conference are invited to continue investigating
these themes. They are also encouraged to explore more specifically the relation
between the editing and/or configuring of Shakespeare’s works through time and the
various ways in which these works were appropriated by readers and audiences.
Participants may find it useful to consider the following questions:

* how did readers’ tastes influence editorial practices?

*alternatively: how did readers react to changes in editorial practice?

* how does the configuration of a text affect the way it is consumed by the public?

* how does the symbolic value or the physical and material dimension of a work alter
individuals’ sense of self and their relation to literature?

* more generally, how do the different agencies which configure a text relate?

* how far is the reconfiguration of a text a creative transformative process? Is
selectiveness synonymous with incompleteness?

*to what extent do our own scholarly frames reconfigure Shakespeare as we combine
the received text being treated with the historical moments of both the treatment and
our own study?

In addressing these and related questions, participants will employ a range of
materials, including early printed versions, bindings, illustrated editions and paintings,
editorial practices, library and museum collections, and later forms including silent
film and Manga Shakespeare.

The symposium will begin on the morning of Wednesday 29th September and
conclude in the afternoon of Friday 1 October, and will include a planning session for
the volume of proceedings.

PARTICIPANTS:

Ilaria Andreoli, Florida State
Erin Blake, Folger
Judith Buchanan, York
Dympna Callaghan, Syracuse
Lukas Erne, Geneva
Lori Anne Ferrell, Claremont
Atsuhiko Hirota, Kyoto
Russell Jackson, Birmingham
Jeffrey Knight, Michigan
Sonia Massai, King’s College, London
Svenn-Arne Myklebost, Bergen
Andrew Murphy, St Andrews
Alan Nelson, Berkeley
Varsha Panjwani, York
Erica Sheen, York
Emma Smith, Oxford
Adam Smyth, Birkbeck
Sarah Stanton, CUP
Noriko Sumimoto, Meisei
Clive Wilmer, Cambridge

Agnès Lafont and
Jean-Christophe Mayer, Montpellier
Bill Sherman, York
Stuart Sillars, Bergen

Symposium organisers