Shakespeare and Our Times – Call For Papers

“Shakespeare and Our Times”
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA.
April 14-16, 2016

Conference Website

An interdisciplinary, international conference on the significance of Shakespeare in the early twenty-first century

Plenary speakers:

  • Jonathan Dollimore, Independent Scholar of Early Modern Studies and Shakespeare, Editor of Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism
  • Ania Loomba, Catherine Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, Author of Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism
  • Leah Marcus, Edwin Mims Professor of English, Vanderbilt University

What does William Shakespeare mean to us today, and what traces of his thinking can still be seen in our lives? In the context of a week-long, multi-faceted investigation of Shakespeare’s continued presence in our cultural landscape, this three-day conference will probe contemporary manifestations of the Bard. To mark the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death we will seek his footprint as we question the legacy of the early colonial mindset in the twenty-first century. Why does this figure among all others endure so persistently? At stake are questions of global imperialism and how it intersects with race, ethnicity, gender, and Shakespeare’s extended influence in what were, for him, newly-emerging colonial locales. How, then, is Shakespeare performed, translated, analyzed today?

Abstracts and panel proposals welcome on these and other topics:

  • Shakespeare and Popular Culture
  • Gender/Sexuality in Shakespeare
  • Shakespeare and the Idea of the Posthuman
  • Shakespeare’s Cities
  • Shakespeare and International Relations
  • Shakespeare and the Sciences
  • Why Shakespeare? Shakespeare for Whom?
  • Shakespeare and Disaster Management
  • Shakespeare and Contemporary Censorship
  • Translating Shakespeare
  • The Rhetoric of Shakespeare
  • Shakespeare and America, Shakespeare in America
  • Shakespeare’s Music
  • Staging Shakespeare, Filming Shakespeare, Now
  • Shakespeare and Language
  • Theorizing Shakespeare in the Twenty-First century

250-word abstracts for individual 20-minute papers, or 3-paper panel sessions can be submitted online at http://goo.gl/forms/Cd582zZpa1 by September 15, 2015. Advanced graduate students welcome to apply.

Inquiries about the conference can be sent to: