 |
 |
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) 585-4594/ [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 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 14:30:59 -0700 From: Jesse Hurlbut <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: PERFORM - Medieval Performing Arts <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: MLA Teasers The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society will sponser two sessions at MLA in Chicago. MRDS members will receive complete information in the newsletter (it's in the mail!), but if you just can't wait, here is some information to get you started. MRDS HAPPY HOUR On the evening of December 28 Share drinks in Milla Riggio's room in the Hyatt Regency 6:00 P.M. to DINNERTIME. All Welcome. Bring your Friends. MRDS SESSIONS Please note the times and locations of these sessions. They are BOTH being held in the Sheraton Hotel. ------------------------------------------ Session 13 (MRDS) Carnival and Popular Culture: From Early Europe to the Contemporary Caribbean Monday, 27 December, 1:45–3:00 p.m. Missouri, Sheraton “Masquerade Dreams” Helene Bellour, Paris, France; Jeffrey Chock, Port of Spain, Trinidad “Time Off for Bad Behavior: Social Satire versus Anarchic Fantasy in Carnival Masks, Medieval and Modern” Martin Walsh, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor “Cuban Carnival and the ‘Special Period.’” Judith Bettelheim, Emory Univ. Respondents: Pamela Franco, University of Illinois at Chicago; Samuel Kinser, Northern Illinois Univ. Note from the Organizer, Milla Riggio The MRDS has organized a session on Carnival that links the study of modern festivals with those of history. It will feature a slide/calypso presentation of contemporary Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, followed by papers presented by Samuel Kinser and MRDS member Martin Walsh that link such carnivals with festivals of the past. Internationally known art historian Judith Bettelheim will focus on Carnival in contemporary Cuba, where it was recently reinstated. Pamela Franco will focus on gender issues and other related questions in contemporary West Indian Festivals. This important session, which has required financial subsidies provided by Trinity College, Hartford, CT, and which assembles materials from various traditions, has been placed in the conference IN THE ADDED FIRST HALF DAY, December 27, at 1:45 pm, and it will be held in the hotel designated for foreign language papers rather than in the hotel assigned to English language presentations. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT. Please plan to attend! Tell your friends about this session! Come early! Be there! Spread the word! ------------------------------------------ Session 173 (MRDS) The Representation of Jews on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage: A Roundtable Tuesday, 28 December, 8:30–9:45 a.m. Huron, Sheraton “The Comic Abject Object: Jews in Medieval Drama” Sylvia Tomasch, Hunter Coll., City Univ. of New York “Comedy, Conversion, and Jewish Absence in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice” Lisa R. Lampert, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana “Barabas, Shylock, and Company: Mediterranean Commerce and Jewish Merchants in the Drama of Early Modern England” Daniel James Vitkus, Florida Inst. of Tech. “Strange Behavior: Cultural Expectation and the Jewish Irruption” Lloyd Edward Kermode, Ithaca Coll. “Edged Out of Exile: At What Price Jewish Dignity?” Yvette M. Smith, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana “Celestina, Contamination, and the Performance of Jewishness” Gregory S. Hutcheson, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago Note from the Organizer, Robert Clark The goal of the roundtable is to bring together the broadest possible spectrum of current work on this topic in both the medieval and early modern periods. Sylvia Tomasch explores the portrayal of Jews through comic means as abject objects, that is, as constructions fashioned to focus and combat Christian doubt by providing a visible locus of subjugated otherness. Her analysis focuses on two characters: Archisynagogus, of the twelfth-century Benediktbeuern Christmas play; and Abraham, in the fourteenth-century Czech Mastrikar. Daniel Vitkus analyzes the representation of two other characters against the contemporary historical record. Lloyd Kermode investigates the complex of gender, religion, and race as types of “otherness” in the women in The Merchant of Venice. Yvette-Marie Smith studies the highly ambivalent representation of “virtuous” Jews in the Biblical Drama of France. Gregory Hutcheson proposes an analysis of the protagonist of Fernando de Rojas’s Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499), in which this figure of the “alcahueta” functions as the veteran polluter of notions of caste, orthodoxy, normativity (both cultural and sexual), the literary word, and language itself. It is hoped that, after the five speakers have outlined their positions, there will be ample time for audience response and discussion.