CFP: International Shakes Conference - UMass - September

Call for papers: The 2nd  International Shakespeare Conference: Translation, Adaptation, Performance
"Where in the World is Shakespeare?"
September 18-20, 2015
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA, USA

What makes Shakespeare funny in Kabul? In 2005, Corinne Jaber claimed (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that ?Afghans don't do tragedy.? This idea shaped her production of Love's Labour's Lost, which she staged with the Roy-e-Sabs Troupe in the garden of a Kabul estate formerly occupied by a nobleman 150 years ago. Making Shakespeare's humor ?work? or translate in Anglophone productions is a challenge for many contemporary directors. Making it work in Dari and in a space fraught with war and occupation poses an even more complicated set of challenges. How does such a production raise questions about the comedy genre and what makes something funny? How does it raise questions about audience or national identity? The same troupe would eventually stage Comedy of Errors (in Dari) at the Globe Theater in 2012, which signifies a transnational Shakespeare even as it re-places the play in its ?original space.?

This is one example of the degree to which Shakespeare has shifted from the centrality of an authoritative text to a multi-center model where different (and often peripheral) Shakespeares exist and cross-influence each other. In this framework, questions of authenticity and intent give way to discussions of Shakespeare in terms of influence and his works as a globalizing force. For the second edition of the International Shakespeare Conference, we seek submissions from a wide range of topics related to the translation, interpretation and adaptation of Shakespeare, including:

    Shakespeare in theater, performance, film, music, visual arts
    Shakespeare in and as pedagogy
    Shakespeare in the context of social justice
    Shakespeare and applied theater
    Shakespeare and materiality
    Case studies of Shakespeare in translation
    Digital Shakespeare(s)
    Intralingual, interlingual or intermedial translation of Shakespeare
    Imitation and reception of Shakespeare worldwide
    Comparative analyses discussing the influence of the Shakespearean linguistic or cultural legacy
    Theoretical approaches to global Shakespeare: postcolonialism, race, gender, sexuality, alterity

The conference will take place September 18-20, 2015, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Please e-mail a 250 word abstract to isc.umass@gmail.com by May 15.

Sponosred by Program in Comparative Literature | Department of English | The Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies | College of Humanities and Fine Arts | International Programs Office | Translation Center

For details, visit http://umass.edu/shakespeare/ or for more information (also available in French, Polish, and Spanish), or contact Edwin Gentzler at gentzler@complit.umass.edu.

Palgrave "Global Shakespeares" Series: Call for Short, Quick Book Proposals

This new series, of whose editorial board I'm a member, is getting off to a great start.  It would be fabulous if some aspects of Arabic Shakespeare could be represented.

Global Shakespeares 
ISBN 9781137354907
Formats: Hardcover
Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
Series Editor: Alexa Huang

This series in the innovative Palgrave Pivot format explores the global afterlife of Shakespearean drama, poetry and motifs in its literary, performative and digital forms of expression in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Published within three months of acceptance of final manuscript, these landmark studies of between 25,000 to 50,000 words will capture global Shakespeares as they evolve.
 
Disseminating big ideas and cutting-edge research in e-book and print formats, and drawing upon open-access resources such as the 'Global Shakespeares' digital archive (http://globalshakespeares.org/), this series marks a significant
addition to scholarship in one of the most exciting areas of Shakespeare studies today.

More info and submission guidelines: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/global-shakespeares-alexa-huang/?K=9781137354907
 

Seeking contributions: Arab World section of Global Shakespeares Electronic Archive

The Global Shakespeares Electronic Archive needs your help.  We have video and/or descriptions of several productions up on our MIT-based online database.  But the other countries' areas are getting way ahead of the Arabic section.  We could use more material and more help contextualizing it!  In particular:

• recent Shakespeare-related productions in Arabic: videos, interviews with directors, basic info
• classic Shakespeare-related Arab/ic plays and films: video or YouTube links, contextualizing info
• help summarizing, selecting, and subtitling!  We have some great stuff, like Yahya Fakharani's King Lear, that awaits curatorial attention. 

For more details, see http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/call-for-materials/  or contact us through this blog.

Conference call on International Shakespeare (in Amherst, MA this March)

Sounds like Arabists would be welcome... 

International Shakespeare: Translation, Adaptation, and Performance

University of Massachusetts Amherst 
8-9 March 2014 
The Translation Center in partnership with The Renaissance Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, co-sponsored by the English Department and the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, invite scholars to its first annual conference, “International Shakespeare: Translation, Adaptation, and Performance,” on March 8-9, 2014. Paper proposals are welcome on a number of topics: case studies of translation, production, imitation or reception of Shakespeare worldwide, as well as on the impact of these phenomena on the interpretation of Shakespeare’s texts. The conference can integrate theories of identity, political perspectives, translation, readership, reception and censorship. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Marie Roche (rochemarie23@gmail.com) and/or Edwin Gentzler (gentzler@complit.umass.edu)  by Jan.15, 2014.

CFP: Essays on cross-cultural Hamlet translation

Reposting this from the ESRA list.  Any takers? 

Hamlet Translations

Call for Contributions

This interdisciplinary collection of articles discusses how Shakespeare's Hamlet has been translated into different languages and cultures at various historical moments (including our times) and for different purposes: performance, reading, artistic experimentation, language-learning, nation-building and personal identity-formation, among many others.

Hamlet, a central text not only of the Shakespearean canon but Western culture generally has travelled in translation worldwide; yet, as Laura Bohannan reminds us in “Shakespeare in the Bush”, the oft-cited universality of the story may not be more than a myth. There are many Hamlets, and rather than straightforward replicas of the original (indeed, which one?) they are texts that carry traces of their own time and place. Hamlets in different tongues may be seen as significant memory-places and multi-layered palimpsests. This volume is interested in shedding light on the many hues and refractions Hamlet gains in translation and, at the same time, reasons for its transcultural presence as cultural capital.

Contributions are welcome on any aspect of translating Hamlet, primarily in interlingual contexts (theatrical, literary, scholarly, retranslations, dramaturgical adjustments, surtitling productions, translations in manuscripts as well as those canonised and constantly re-edited, translations from English as well as from relay languages or indeed translation from English into English, nontranslation or a lack of translation). Different approaches will be considered: contextualised case studies (contemporary and historical), overviews focusing on a particular national culture, comparative articles, insights into language history, style and translation norms through Hamlet, gender- or social-class oriented analyses, character-based, scene-based or motif-based approaches, theoretical explorations, practitioners' reflections, and so on.

Please email a 300 word abstract accompanied by a short biographical note to the editor, Márta Minier, by 15 November 2013 to marta.minier@southwales.ac.uk and miniermarta@hotmail.co.uk.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the editor.

Conference panel on Arab Shakespeare in Canada

A call for papers, due Dec 15, for the Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies. 

Among other thematic sessions:

5.  "Arabic Shakespeare"

The recent stagings of Shakespeare in Arabic in the UK and the Middle East would suggest that the Arabization of Shakespeare is a recent phenomenon. But this is not the case at all. This session aims to look at various ways Shakespeare has been, and continues to be, read or staged in the Arabic-speaking world. The topics are open, and the following are presented only for the purpose of generating ideas:

• Shakespeare's plays translated: how, why, what alterations?
• The Sonnets in translation
• Shakespeare as intertext
• Shakespeare in Middle Eastern historical context

Please send your proposal (of not more than 500 words) to the organizer of this session: Joseph Khoury (jkhoury@stfx.ca).

 And here's the fine print:

I write to call your attention to an upcoming deadline of Dec. 15, 2012 for proposals for the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies to be held at the University of Victoria 1-3 June 2013.  The CSRS invites proposals in English or in French on any Renaissance topic in a variety of disciplines : literature, history, philosophy, music, art history, medicine, cultural studies to the Program Director, Gary Kuchar, (kucharg@uvic.ca).

All proposals must be submitted no later than December 15, 2012.  Papers must not exceed 20 minutes in delivery. All participants must be members of the CSRS. To renew or apply for membership, please contact Margaret Reeves, Department of Critical Studies (English), 351A Fine Arts Bldg., University of British Columbia - Okanagan Campus, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, B.C. V1V 1V7 (margaret.reeves@ubc.ca).

 I hope someone will take this opportunity to grapple with Kamal Abu Dib's new translation of the sonnets!

Call for papers - journal issue on "Global Shakespeares"

A special issue of Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association

on "Global Shakespeare"

Deadline: September 30, 2011

Editor: Alexander Huang, acyhuang@gwu.edu

The Arab world is not yet represented in this issue!

He invites two types of submissions:
• Research article: criticism (5,000-8,000 words)
• Short performance reviews (1,000-2,000 words)
Full CFP available here.

Early registration deadline for World Shakespeare Congress

Prague! Shakespeare!  Tuesday is your last chance for discounted early registration at the World Shakespeare Congress, to be held July 18-22.

Rafik Darragi and I are co-organizing what promises to be a small and interesting seminar on "Shakespeare on the Arab Stage."  Scheduled for the last afternoon of the conference, so if the discussion gets really exciting we can adjourn directly to the pub.  Stalkers and gawkers welcome!  Download the draft program here: http://www.shakespeare2011.net/repository/doc/shakespeare2011-prague-congress-programme-matrix.pdf

Beirut conference - Shakespeare and the Orient

CFP: SHAKESPEARE’S IMAGINED ORIENT (MAY 4-6, 2011)
Due Jan 21 2011
American University of Beirut
shakespeareandtheorient@gmail.com
The American University of Beirut is hosting a three-day conference on Shakespeare’s Imagined Orient on 4-6 May 2011. Speakers include Jonathan Burton (West Virginia University), Gerald Maclean (University of Exeter, UK), Margaret Litvin (Boston University), Daniel Vitkus (Florida State University) and Richard Wilson (Cardiff University). Shakespeare studies has recently experienced a noticeable and dramatic geographical shift. As the textual landscape of Shakespeare’s drama changes, it takes new forms and now points to new horizons, namely the East and the Orient, and more particularly the Levant. From the blasted heaths of England, Shakespeare moves to the most arid and yet fertile soils of the Levant. The aim of the conference, in this emergent field, is to reconsider Shakespeare’s diffusion from both Pre and Postcolonial Middle Eastern perspectives and to examine Shakespeare’s critical relevance to understanding religion and politics on both a local scale (in the Middle East/the Orient) and globally. Reaching across disciplinary boundaries, Shakespeare’s Imagined Orient aims to prove how the critical and artistic reception of Shakespeare in the Orient is paramount to apprehending and reinventing Shakespeare as a cultural and social bridge uniting the “East” and the “West” in the landscape of global culture. The organisers of the conference hope to offer a critical insight into Shakespeare and Early Modern political theology that would help refashion, remap broader issues that engage the status of cultural and religious identity, nation, and individuality in the landscape of global culture. With such issues in mind, we invite submissions concerning the following range of topics: - Representations of the Orient in Shakespeare's Work, - Christian/Muslim Representation/Interaction on Shakespeare's/the Early Modern stage, - Local/Global Shakespeare (from a Middle Eastern perspective), - Shakespeare's women and the Orient, - Desire, Phantasm, and the Orient, - Identity and Nationhood, - Material Culture and the Imagined Orient on Shakespeare's Stage.

Please send abstracts (300 words) or session proposals and brief CV by 21 January 2011. Notifications will be sent by 15 February 2011. On your abstract please include your name, institution, city and state or country, email address and phone number. E-mail your abstracts/session proposals as a Word file. Please note that each presentation is limited to 25 minutes (including questions). Full details can be downloaded from the conference website at www.aub.edu.lb/conferences/shake_orient/ Questions may be addressed to the conference chair: Prof. Francois-Xavier Gleyzon at ShakespeareandtheOrient@gmail.com
Department of English
American University of Beirut
Fisk Hall, Rm 229
PO Box 11-0236
Beirut 1107 2020 - Lebanon
The conference is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the British Council, the Anis K. Makdisi Program in Literature, the Office of the Provost, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut.

Seeking video of Arab/ic Shakespeare performances

The Global Shakespeares web archive at MIT has gone live -- with virtually no content on its Arab World section. There's only my placeholder introduction. 
Yalla! Let's send our archivist friends some video to include in the site.  Any leads can be sent to me or to Prof. Peter Donaldson, the site's editor-in-chief.

Call for Materials - Arab Shakespeare Performance

The curators of the MIT Shakespeare Electronic Archive (http://web.mit.edu/shakespeare/, directed by Peter S. Donaldson, Professor of Literature at MIT) have expressed interest in developing an online database of Arab/ic Shakespeare performance. The site would be modeled on and linked to its recently launched site on Shakespeare Performance in Asia (SPIA, http://web.mit.edu/shakespeare/asia/) The Shakespeare Electronic Archive is also developing new archives in Brazil, India and other areas.

The Asia site is still in development, so it is too early to know exactly what a proposed Arab World companion site might include. Participants can expect to have significant input into the design. That said, here are some possibilities (all would be indexed and searchable):

• video clips from contemporary or older productions of Shakespeare plays and adaptations (and complete videos of selected productions)
• brief summaries of significant Shakespeare productions and adaptations
• a database of reviews (in both Arabic and English)
• interviews with directors and actors, both young and more established, who have engaged seriously with Shakespeare
• script excerpts of unpublished Shakespeare adaptations and important out-of-print Shakespeare translations
• a bibliography of important scholarly work on Arab Shakespeare and Arab theatre more generally (in Arabic and English, with hyperlinks when articles are available online)

Please contact me through this blog (arabshakespeare [at] gmail.com) if you would like to be involved in the pilot stage of this project. Please also contact me if you are able to share any materials (e.g., full video recordings or clips) that would be useful in constructing a small demonstration site to solicit grant support for the project. Of course, interested scholars and MIT Shakespeare Project staff will work to obtain formal permission from the authors/directors before anything is published online.