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-------- Original Message -------- Subject: CFP: Back to the Medieval Future (10/20/05; ATHE 2006, Chicago, 8/3-8/6/06) Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 10:22:38 -0400 From: jill stevenson <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: PERFORM - Medieval Performing Arts <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Back to the Medieval Future, or, Medieval Performance as the Vision of Tomorrow The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) 2006 Conference Chicago, August 3-6, 2006 As ATHE considers its past, present, and future, it is a particularly appropriate time to explore recent trends in scholarship that have revealed the applicability of the past to our present inquiries into the future. Not only has the Middle Ages sparked intense scholarly activity, but the performances that comprise our popular culture are suddenly full of “medievalisms.” Movies such as Lord of the Rings, Kingdom of Heaven, The Da Vinci Code, and plays such as The Mysteries and SITI Company’s Death and the Ploughman not only represent a growing interest in the Middle Ages, but specifically in performing the Middle Ages as a way to engage contemporary issues. As Stephen G. Nichols notes in a recent article in PMLA, “While the image of the Middle Ages evoked in popular culture varies from credible to wildly fanciful, the range, success, and in some instances controversy of such works attest to their timeliness and to the general public’s prodigious appetite for the material.” He posits that recent scholars of medieval culture have revealed “the historical context of the medieval phenomena they address as at once different from our own period and, because of that difference, the better able to engage with it.” The Middle Ages has emerged as a particularly constructive mode of inquiry. This panel seeks work that considers how medieval performance can inform 20th- and 21st-century theatre studies. The goal is not simply to show similarities between the Middle Ages and contemporary cultures, but to demonstrate how medieval concerns, questions, and anxieties can help us to explore our own situation. Can investigating the performance of violence in the medieval crusades help us interpret and respond to 21st-century religious violence? By understanding how large-scale theatre events such at the York cycle or the Gréban Passion were employed to imagine and define communities, can we discover new ways to shape our own communities using theatre? Has our image and media saturated 21st century returned us to the visual culture of the Middle Ages? Can the performative nature of religion as expressed in, for example, sermons, saints’ lives, visual artifacts, etc., shed light on the current distribution and control of religious ideology today? Papers that engage understudied geographic regions or periods are encouraged. Please send your one page abstract to Jill Stevenson at [log in to unmask] Include your name, a short bio including affiliation, the title of your paper, mailing address, phone number, and email address with your submission. If applicable, you must also specify what AV equipment you will require. The deadline for abstracts is October 20th. You can find out more about ATHE at www.athe.org. Jill Stevenson -- Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/ Records of Early English Drama/ Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 813-4093/ [log in to unmask] List-owner of REED-L <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed-l.html> http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html => REED's home page http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/stage.html => our theatre resource page http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young => my home page