Schedule / Horaire
Tuesday 22 April 2014, 15h30-17h30.
Room: Vendôme.
Leaders / Organisatrices
Ema Vyroubalova, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Elizabeth Pentland, York University (Canada), and Alexa Huang, George Washington University (USA)
Participants
Discussant: David Schalkwyk, Global Shakespeare Centre, Queen Mary University of London and University of Warwick (UK)
Participants in alphabetical order:
- Anston Bosman, Amherst College (USA)
Aside Effects - Mariacristina Cavecchi, University of Milan (Italy)
Tagging the Bard. Shakespeare and Graffiti - Tom Cheesman, Swansea University (UK)
The ”Global” Shakespeare Translation Space - Brian Culver, New York University (USA)
“[B]anish plump Jack, and banish all the world”: Global Studies and Shakespeare’s History Plays - Eric Johnson, Folger Shakespeare Library (USA)
BardMetrics: Measuring the Global Shakespeare Marketplace - Yvette Khoury, Independent Scholar (UK)
The ‘Customised’ Model of Aterlife Draws On - Aneta Mancewicz, University of Bedfordshire (UK)
Global and Local Dialectics in Jan Klata’s Titus Andronicus (Wroclaw & Dresden 2012) - Martin Orkin, University of Haifa (Israel)
Troilus and Cressida: Shakespeare, the National Theatre and the RSC as ‘global’? - Ronan Paterson, Teesside University (UK)
“Cleave not to their mould”: Transformations of Macbeth - Elizabeth Pentland, York University (Canada)
Hujjat: Figuring the Global and the Local in Student Appropriations of Shakespeare - Aleksandra (Ola) Sakowska, King’s College London (UK)
‘Liquid Shakespeare’: Theorising global and local performance from a sociological perspective - Mariangela Tempera, University of Ferrara (Italy)
Global Shakespeare in Tatters: Analyzing Fragments from His Works in World Cinema - Ema Vyroubalova, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)
Methods behind Designing Global Shakespeare Courses
Abstracts / Résumés
1. Anston Bosman, Amherst College (USA)
Aside Effects
The multiple channels of global Shakespeare may be separated into a “main text” and “side texts.” From sign language interpreting to intertitles and subtitles to multimedia glosses, we encounter Shakespeare’s work in ways that deepen comprehension but threaten distraction. Might the early modern aside—an amalgam of speech and movement—help us to grasp today’s “side texts”? Can divided attention on the sixteenth-century stage remain a model for twenty-first century reading and spectatorship? Should we map the verbal onto the national and the visual onto the transnational? Or have translation and remediation forced a change in those cognitive processes?
2. Mariacristina Cavecchi, University of Milan (Italy)
Tagging the Bard. Shakespeare and Graffiti
My paper explores how and why “Shakespeare graffiti” has become an important cultural phenomenon and fathoms a possible new methodology to approach the study of Shakespeare. Many traces of Shakespeare have been disseminated in the graffiti world and, conversely, the grammar and language of graffiti have often been used by theatre, cinema and visual art to update Shakespeare. It is a field of investigation which can give meaningful contributions to Shakespeare studies. Indeed graffiti quoting Shakespeare’s lines have been proliferating all over the world and they seem to respond to the need for a transnational look while sustaining traditional values.
3. Tom Cheesman, Swansea University (UK)
The ”Global” Shakespeare Translation Space
“Shakespeare” is “global” like Coca Cola, but translation always occupies confined spaces joining language-specific communities of practice. So “global Shakespeare as methodology” suggests a utopian, cosmopolitan effort to institute a borderless space for future intellectual and creative endeavours. The plethora of versions of Shakespeare’s works presents an opportunity to forge quasi-global digital spaces where his worldwide traces can be represented and explored in new ways: in metadata, text data, and audiovisual media. Experiments are running for example at www.delightedbeauty.org and www.delightedbeauty.org/vvv — aiming to seed a global cultural space with Shakespeare.
4. Brian Culver, New York University (USA)
“[B]anish plump Jack, and banish all the world”: Global Studies and Shakespeare’s History Plays
1 Henry IV’s representations of nationhood and political sovereignty, economic metaphors of currency and counterfeiting, and composition during the financial crisis of the late 1590s all reflect early modern England’s emerging global economy. This global context, moreover, informs one of the play’s most recurrent critical issues, the relationship between national identity and individual subjectivity. Just as Falstaff in the famous tavern-scene makes of his round belly a synecdoche of the world’s global circumference, Shakespeare in 1 Henry IV makes English history part of the history of globalization.
5. Eric Johnson, Folger Shakespeare Library (USA)
BardMetrics: Measuring the Global Shakespeare Marketplace
Quantitative analysis of literature tends to look inward, examining the texts themselves. The project proposes to look outward, enabling researchers to examine how readers, viewers, and scholars experience texts and other media surrounding them. BardMetrics is assembling data from Shakespeare-related institutions about their web site usage, book sales, ticket sales, conference attendance, and other metrics. These statistics show which works are searched and read the most; how scholars conduct research online; which countries are most interested in Shakespeare, and other trends. This paper will explain how this data-driven approach can benefit the field.
6. Yvette Khoury, Independent Scholar (UK)
The ‘Customised’ Model of Aterlife Draws On
Proclus’ Elements of Theology, which gives us the tools that explain the transformation of written works that seem to transcend the life of the author, the text or the period in which they existed. By utilising certain Proclusean ‘Propositions’ we assess the changes to written works and their transformations into new environments. The ‘customised’ model, I argue, allows us to analyse how Shakespeare’s works become infused with foreign cultural elements (alien to Shakespeare): elements such as Chinese operatic traditions, Arabic storytelling or Brechtian techniques, help make up new ‘customised’ drama in those cultures.
7. Aneta Mancewicz, University of Bedfordshire (UK)
Global and Local Dialectics in Jan Klata’s Titus Andronicus (Wroclaw & Dresden 2012)
In facilitating collaboration between companies across countries, globalization encourages comparison of national identities and approaches to Shakespeare. The global festival circuit promises intercultural dialogue, yet it also subtly imposes preconceived categories of nation and local staging style on its audiences. Jan Klata’s Titus Andronicus (Teatr Polski, Wroclaw and Staatschauspiel Dresden, 2012) self-consciously takes up this challenge. The performance addresses local and global dialectics of Shakespearean performance through an ironic exploitation of linguistic, cultural, and historical tensions in the portrayal of Poles as Goths and Germans as Romans.
8. Martin Orkin, University of Haifa (Israel)
Troilus and Cressida: Shakespeare, the National Theatre and the RSC as ‘global’?
How useful is the binary of the global and the local as part of a putative methodology for study of a global Shakespeare? Using, where appropriate, Troilus and Cressida, I examine Shakespeare’s (local) presentation of non-English (global) places within his plays. Then I consider application of this binary, after post-colonialism. The (now global) text has sometimes been used as emancipatory or ethical reference point within locations considered reactionary. How then may we rethink ongoing convergences of such or other perceived concerns within the global Shakespeare text and receptions, in particular locations? What limits may there be to the global-local paradigm?
9. Ronan Paterson, Teesside University (UK)
“Cleave not to their mould”: Transformations of Macbeth
Shakespeare’s plays are seen all over the globe, but one seems to assimilate more readily than most. Macbeth has been filmed more often than any other tragedy by Shakespeare, in settings from Madagascar to Melbourne to Mumbai, from medieval Japan to a modern day burger joint. The success of some of these films has in turn spawned Anglophone theatre productions which deliberately employ such settings and contexts. Why do Western directors believe that audiences find it easier to relate to the play set in modern day Liberia or feudal Japan than medieval Scotland?
10. Elizabeth Pentland, York University (Canada)
Hujjat: Figuring the Global and the Local in Student Appropriations of Shakespeare
This paper explores the use of creative writing or “applied Shakespeare” assignments as a methodology for teaching “global Shakespeare” in the undergraduate classroom. Hujjat, a student reimagining of Hamlet that translates the action to a remote, tribal region of Pakistan, draws upon a wide range of cinematic and textual sources encountered as part of a seminar on contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare. This remarkable project serves as my principal example as I explore the politics and aesthetics of student Shakespeare adaptations that seek to address issues of transnational significance through the lens of the local and the particular.
11. Aleksandra (Ola) Sakowska, King’s College London (UK)
‘Liquid Shakespeare’: Theorising global and local performance from a sociological perspective
In the paper I focus on my concept of ‘Liquid Shakespeare’ which came out of my research, placed at the intersection of Shakespearean studies, performance studies and sociological studies, at the historical time described by Anglo-Polish social thinker Zygmunt Bauman as ‘liquid modernity’. While the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre project in Poland will serve as a major example of how Shakespeare’s legacy is exploited in the unavoidable politics of the local and the global, I believe that this approach can be useful when discussing global Shakespearean performance in general, particularly its economic connotations, applicable to Shakespeare when considered a global brand.
12. Mariangela Tempera, University of Ferrara (Italy)
Global Shakespeare in Tatters: Analyzing Fragments from His Works in World Cinema
The paper makes a case for the relevance of the analysis of Shakespearean fragments on film and explores some of the methodological problems that researchers face when: a) building and accessing databases of references in non-English speaking countries; b) dealing with the pitfalls created by subtitles or multiple audio versions of a film; c) relying on local knowledge to distinguish between opportunistic and meaningful uses of Shakespearean references; d) exploring aspects of internal and external audience response to the fragments.
13. Ema Vyroubalova, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)
Methods behind Designing Global Shakespeare Courses
This paper undertakes a systematic examination of the process of constructing and teaching a Global Shakespeare course. I first analyze the issues of what place the early modern play-texts will have on the syllabus, which materials will count as “global”, and how to incorporate languages other than English into the course. I then use examples of real courses to discuss how relevant texts and audio-visual material can be assembled into syllabi. I look at course design based on chronology, geography, genre, or political and cultural themes, proposing that different models will suit the interests and needs of different student populations.