Apologies for cross-postings. 

Below is a CFP for one of the MRDS sessions at MLA 2008. The session is still open. You may submit directly to Christopher Swift, the organizer.

Performing Conquest, Colonization and Resistance in the European Middle Ages

Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society sponsored session

The Modern Language Association Convention, December 2008

The panel seeks papers that engage postcolonial theoretical models in exploring medieval performance subjects.  Scholars from a number of disciplines have identified such cultural operations as Orientalism, exile, hybridity, and resistance--processes normally emblematic of postcolonial/post-medieval fields of study--in pre-modern subjects such as Anglo-Norman annexation, the Iberian reconquest, and crusade literature.  Theatre studies, on the other hand, has been less inclined to situate medieval performance within imperial discourses and colonial histories; the fact that Shakespeare's The Tempest is still invoked as an embryonic colonialist drama is a sign that much work has yet to be done.  This panel offers such an opportunity, principally to provide new ways of understanding performative power relations in medieval societies but also to continue the important work of confounding the myth of a monolithic, static, and homogeneous Middle Ages. 

Submit 250-word abstracts and contact information to Christopher Swift at [log in to unmask] by March 15, 2008.

 
Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby, Ph.D.
Secretary/Treasurer, MRDS
Assistant Professor of Theatre and Humanities
Centenary College
400 Jefferson St.
Hackettstown, NJ 07840
908-852-1400 ext 2309
[log in to unmask]