Collaboration, Authorship and the Renaissance: Early Modern and

Queen's University, Belfast, January 13-14 2012

Plenary Speakers: Professor Gary Taylor (Florida State University),
Professor Grace Iopollo (University of Reading) and Dr. Deborah Cartmell
(De Montfort University)

Over the past three decades, the increasing attention paid to the
collaborative practices of the early modern theatre has generated new
opportunities for critical enquiry. In particular, it has been possible
to explore more deeply the role of the author and his/her implication in
networks of performance and textual polyphony. In tandem with these
developments, criticism has addressed the multiple ways in which
Shakespearean and other early modern texts have been reconceptualised
and rewritten in modern and postmodern digital technologies-in film,
television and the expanding creative environments of Web 2.0-and how
such appropriations affect received notions of authorship, authenticity
and originality. This conference seeks to initiate a dialogue between
these two crucial schools of thought. It will investigate potential
cross-fertilizations between early modern constructions of authors and
collaborators and postmodern paradigms of auteurs and 'digital
Shakespeares'; in so doing, further areas of interest will be
illuminated, and fresh understandings of texts and their producers will
be facilitated.

The conference invites abstracts on topics which may include, but are
not limited to, the following:

* Authorship in early modern manuscript, material and print culture
* Authorship, collaboration and revision in Shakespearean and
non-Shakespearean playtexts; collaborative practices in early modern
theatres, and wider literary and textual culture
* Shakespeare and auteur theory; Shakespearean texts in
Anglo-American and world cinema
* The 'author' and contemporary theories of textuality, materiality,
gender and intentionality; authorial identity and its 'recovery' via the
early modern and postmodern text
* Shakespeare and the Renaissance in post-modern digital
technologies; videogames, video and sound technology, the Web and
user-generated content
* New and renewed editorial strategies in postmodernity; authorship
and collaboration in the age of hypertextuality

Submit abstracts (250 words) to: collaboration2012@qub.ac.uk

Extended deadline: 27th September 2011

(note: a small registration fee may be required)

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