<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title></title></head><body>
<div>Dear colleagues</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The International Shakespeare Association is now calling for
registrations and workshop participants for its 2011 conference in
Prague (see attached). I will be chairing a session with Czech
scholar Klara Kolinska. We welcome expressions of interest from
researchers and practitioners who might like to participate in this
session. If you are interested, please contact me or Dr Kolinska
(kolinska@phil.muni.cz)</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Shakespearean
Practice, Shakespeare Industry and Indigeneity:</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>This seminar brings together scholars and theatre artists from
around the world to examine problems of Shakespearean performance and
indigenous cultural production. Taking as its starting point Yvette
Nolan and Kennedy Cathy MacKinnon's aboriginal reworking of<i>
Julius Caesar</i> in<i> Death of a Chief</i> at Native Earth
Productions in Toronto in 2008, the seminar investigates how
Shakespearean performance serves both to legitimize and delegitimize
indigenous cultural production in societies marked by histories of
colonialism and displacement.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman"
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>In<i> Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined
Theatre</i>, Alan Filewod (session co-chair) argues that the
Shakespeare industry in Canada restages a history of cultural invasion
and racial surrogation. "Shakespeare," considered as a culturally
neutral site of humanist commonality, marks an "absent authentic"
that reinforces Anglophone hegemony in an increasingly pluralist
society. At the same time it secures the structure of critical and
aesthetic value that regulates the institutional theatre sector. In
this model of historical development, Shakespearean practice has
functioned as a marker of cultural accession by which minoritized and
non-Anglophone theatre work achieves critical legitimacy.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The seminar proposes to gather scholars
and artists, familiar with or engaged in Shakespearean practice in
"settler-invasion" cultures (Australia, Canada and New Zealand) and
"imperialized" cultures (Caribbean, South Africa, India) to
investigate, in both practical and theoretical terms, how this process
of accession functions to produce and mark indigeneity. In this
context, indigeneity refers not simply to "aboriginal"
subjectivity but as well to racial and social categories marked and
confirmed as embodied in the process of performance.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Possible questions
for discussion include, but are not limited to, the following:<br>
How is contemporary Shakespearean practice related to indigenous
cultural production?<br>
Does Shakespearean practice<i> produce</i> indigeneity?<br>
What are the issues involved, and what are the practical
implications?<br>
What is the position of Shakespearean productions informed by
indigeneity in the larger context of the tradition of Shakespearean
practice?</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div> Deadline for registration is March 15 of this year.
Delegates choose seminars at the point of registration.</div>
<div>cheers</div>
<div>Alan</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>Alan Filewod<br>
Professor<br>
School of English and Theatre Studies<br>
University of Guelph<br>
<br>
519.824. 4120 x 52932</div>
</body>
</html>