MLA1998, San Francisco

Session 11 (MRDS)
Early Drama and Visual Culture
Sunday, 27 Dec. 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Union Square 17 and 18
San Francisco Hilton

"Spectator as Actor in the Movable Playword of Parish Drama in the West of England,"
James David Stokes, Univ. of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

"Playing the Past to Secure the Future in English Provincial Towns,"
Lloyd Edward Kermode, Rice Univ.

"Taming the Stranger: Visual Construction of the Exotic,"
Milla C. Riggio, Trinity Coll., CT

Session 481 (MRDS)
Performing Female: Embodiment and Personification in the Medieval Theater
Tuesday, 29 Dec. 8:30-9:45 a.m.
Union Square 14, San Francisco Hilton

"Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope: Gender and Transgression in Medieval German Drama,"
Stephen K. Wright, Catholic Univ. of America

"The Tears of the Virgin: The Transgendered Performance of Grief and Mourning,"
Leslie Abend Callahan, Univ. of Pennsylvania

"Queer Frames for the Female Personificational Body in Middle English Drama,"
James John Paxson, Univ. of Florida

OTHER SESSIONS OF INTEREST:

Session 105
Marlowe and Early Modern Politics
Sunday, 27 Dec. 7:00-8:15 p.m.
Union Square 12, San Francisco Hilton

"Space, Measurement, and Custom in Tamburlaine the Great, Part I,"
Garrett A. Sullivan, Penn State Univ., University Park

"Tampering with the Records: Engendering the Political Community and Marlowe's Appropriation of the Past in Edward II,"
Georgia E. Brown, Cambridge Univ.

"'Forsake Thy King, and Do but Join with Me': Marlowe and Treason,"
Karen Cunningham, Florida State Univ.

Session 298
Shakespeare: Performance/Performativity
Monday, 28 Dec. 1:45-3:00 p.m.
Franciscan Room, San Francisco Hilton

"Performance/History: Queen Isabel in Henry V,"
Diana Elizabeth Henderson, Massachusetts Inst. of Tech.

"Performing the Globe,"
W.B. Worthen, Univ. of California, Davis

"Media Reconfigurations, Popular Culture, and Performance,"
Barbara S. Freedman, Tufts Univ.

Session 425
Staging Pedagogy: Education and Performance in Renaissance England
Monday, 28 Dec. 7:15-8:30 p.m.
Union Square 23 and 24, San Francisco Hilton

"Wit and Science and the Dramaturgy of Learning,"
Kent Cartwright, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

"Alter Boys: Pedagogy and Theatricality at Saint Paul's,"
Eric S. Wilson, Harvard Univ.

"Coming of Age on Stage: The Seventeenth-Century Pedagogical Masque,"
Kate D. Levin, City Coll., City Univ. of New York

Respondent: Rebecca Bushnell, Univ of Pennsylvania

Session 426
The Drama of the Nondramatic
Monday, 28 Dec. 7:15-8:30 p.m.
Parlor 9, Continental Ballroom, San Francisco Hilton

"The Singing Bull: Legal Authority, Liturgical Performance, and Middle English Lyrics,"
Bruce Wood Holsinger, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder

"Footprints in the Invisible Actor: Tracing the Jongleur Theater in Premodern Literary Texts,"
Bruce R. Burningham, Florida Atlantic Univ.

"Theatropaideia: Playing Around in the Spectacle of the World,"
William Newton West, Univ. of California, Berkeley

Respondent: Jody Enders, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara

Session 512
Medievalists at the Movies
Tuesday, 29 Dec. 10:15-11:30 a.m.
Union Square 23, San Francisco Hilton

"Flesh and Roses: Manuscripts in Movies,"
Elizabeth J. Bryan, Brown Univ.

"Ladyhawke and the Future of the Middle Ages,"
Geraldine G.N. Heng, Univ. of Texas, Austin

"Robin Hood as (Inter)National Allegory,"
Sharon A. Kinoshita, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz

"Forbidden Planet and the Terrors of Philogy,"
Seth Lerer, Stanford Univ.

Session 527
Marlowe and Shakespeare: The Anxiety of Influence
Tuesday, 29 Dec. 10:15-11:30 a.m.
Parlor 3, Continental Ballroom
San Francisco Hilton

"Venus and Adonis in the Context of Hero and Leander and the Elizabethan Verse Epyllium,"
Maurice Charney, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick

"Wanton Pamphlets and Wayward Women in Marlowe and Shakespeare,"
Dympna Carmel Callaghan, Syracuse Univ.

"'For a Tricksy Word, Defy the Matter": The Influence of The Jew of Malta on The Merchant of Venice,"
Robert Alexander Logan, Univ. of Hartford

Session 554
Playing the Mother: Early Modern Dramas of Maternity
Tuesday, 29 Dec. 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.
Union Square 23 and 24, San Francisco Hilton

"Nurturing the Young in Sixteenth-Century Germany,"
Paul Foley Casey, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia

"Representations of a Motherly Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Children Companies,"
Jeanne H. McCarthy, Univ. of Texas, Austin

"Mothers as Amazons: Maternity and Masculinity in 1, 2, and 3 Henry IV,"
Kathryn Schwarz, Vanderbilt Univ.

Respondent: Leah Sinanoglou Marcus, Vanderbilt Univ.

Session 555. Representing the English Reformation
Tuesday, 29 Dec. 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.
Continental Ballroom 6, San Francisco Hilton

"The King of Souls: The State and the Sacred in Measure for Measure,"
Debora K. Shuger, Univ. of California, Los Angeles

"Jacobean Comedy and the Pedagogy of Reform,"
Huston Diehl, Univ. of Iowa

"'Notable and Speciall Significacion': Reformed Representation in the Book of Common Prayer,"
Timothy Rosendale

Session 653
Women, Death, and Mourning in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Tuesday, 29 Dec. 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Union Square 17 and 18, San Francisco Hilton

"Inconsolable Grief: Feminine Lamentation in Medieval Drama,"
Katharine Goodland, Polytechnic Univ.

"Anticipation the Pietà: The Lament for the Arcadian Prince Pallas in the Roman d'Eneas,"
Raymond Cormier, Longwood Coll.

"A Widow's Grief Illustrated: The Christliche Betrachtung of Magdalena Sibylla, Duchess of Württemberg,"
Cecilia M. Pick, Univ. of Texas, Austin

Added Session (NOT IN PROGRAM)
Performance Texts in their Literary Environment
Tuesday, 29 December, 1:45-3:00 p.m.
Plaza Room A, San Francisco Hilton

"Legal Documents as Literary Performance,"
Emily Steiner, Yale Univ.

"When the King Harps on a Subject...: Power and Performance in Sir Orfeo,"
Christine Chism, Rutgers Univ.

"Negotiating Poetry: Deschamps Reading Machaut at the Anglo-French Treaty Negotiations of 1375,"
Joyce Coleman, Univ. of North Dakota

Recent Publications

Max Harris, "The Impotence of Dragons: Playing Devil in the Trinidad Carnival," The Drama Review 42:3 (1998). Special issue devoted entirely to the Trinidad Carnival. Guest-edited by Milla Riggio.

Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
Contents: 1. The Idea of the Civic Triumph; 2. The Christmas King; 3. The Civic Triumph as Royal Epiphany; 4. Third Advent: Grace in this Life and Afterward Glory; 5. Fourth Advent: The Civic Triumph as Royal Apocalypse; 6. The Queen's Advent

Irene Mamczarz, ed. Métamorphoses de la Création dramatique et lyrique à l'épreuve de la scène. Actes du 7e Colloque Internationale de la Société Internationale d'Histoire Comparée du Théâtre, de l'Opéra et du Ballet. Olschki editore, 1998.

Charles Mazouer, Le Théâtre Français du Moyen Age. Paris: Sedes, 1998.
Volume 1 in a series on early French drama.

Charles Mazouer, "Vingt Ans de Recherches sur le theatre du XVIe siecle. Premiere Partie: Le Theatre Serieux," Nouvelle Revue du Seizieme Siecle, vol. 16/2 (1998) 301-325.

John Pitcher, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, volume 10, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. The articles in this volume concentrate chiefly on Elizabethan and Jacobean court and public stage drama. The topics included discussions of the social character of Arden of Faversham, patriarchy in The Tragedy of Mariam, the plot of Women Beware Women, and the tastes of the Jacobean audiences who attended plays performed by the First Whitefriars Company. The volume also contains studies of Edward Alleyn's life and career, and the design and authorship of a masque played at Essex House in 1621, together with a comprehensive account of English actors in Kassel in Germany during Shakespeare's time. Other subjects treated include Protector Somerset and the Christmas Revels of 1551-52, the entertainment presented to Queen Elizabeth on her progresses, censorship in Samuel Daniel's The Tragedy of Philotas, and what one particular manuscript in the Folger Shakespeare Library has to tell us about seventeenth-century playhouses.

Lois Potter, ed. Playing Robin Hood: The Legend as Performance in Five Centuries. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998.

Milla Riggio, The Play of Wisdom: its Texts and Contexts. A MLA Center for Scholarly Editions approved edition. New York: AMS: 1998.

André Tissier, ed. Recueil de Farces. Tome 12. TLF 495. Geneva: Droz, 1998. Includes: Les Deux Savetiers, Brus, Savetier Audin, Martin de Cambrai and la Pipee.

Paul Whitfield White, ed. Marlowe, History, and Sexuality: New Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe. New York: AMS, 1998.

Stephen K. Wright, "Was There a Twelfth-Century Creed Play at St. Emmeram?" Medieval English Theatre 18 (1996), 74-84.

Comparative Drama
Summer 1998 (vol, 32, no. 2),
KENT CARTWRIGHT
The Confusions of Gallathea: John Lyly as a popular dramatist

VÉRONIQUE PLESCH
Walls and Scaffolds: Pictorial and Dramatic Passion Cycles in the Duchy of Savoy

Comparative Drama
Fall 1998 (vol. 32, no. 3)
STEPHEN MAYNARD
Feasting on Ayre: Community, Consumption, and Communion in The Shoemaker's Holiday

MAX HARRIS
Fireworks, Turks, and Long-Necked Mules: Pyrotechnic Theater in German and Catalonia

Comparative Drama
Winter 1998-99 (vol. 32, no. 4)
DOC ROSSI
Hamlet and The Life of Galileo

PATRICK RYAN
Marlowe's Edward II and the Medieval Passion Play

ROBERT L. REID
Epiphanal Encounters in Shakespearean Dramaturgy

Early Drama, Art, and Music Review,
Fall 1998 (vol. 21, no. 1)
VÉRONIQUE PLESCH
Ludus Sabaudiae: Observations on Late Medieval Theater in the Duchy of Savoy

MARY REMNANT
Musical Instruments in Early English Theater: Tudor Plays

Reviews by Joe Hannan, Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, Leif Søndergaard, John McKinnell, and Kathleen Falvey.

Early European Drama Translation Series

Volume Two of the Early European Drama Translation Series is now available. Antichrist and Judgment Day: The Middle French "Jour du Jugement", translated with an introduction and commentary by Richard K. Emmerson and David F. Hult, with a note on the music by Keith Glaeske (Univ. of North Carolina at Asheville: Pegasus Press, 1998). ISBN 1-889818-06-2

The volume includes the musical notation from the MS. Full color reproductions of the miniatures can be seen at http://toisondor.byu.edu/dscriptorium/jugement

More information available on the EEDT web page: http://www.acad.cua.edu/as/engl/eedt.htm

REED Project

This past May 1998, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Barbara D. Palmer and Mary Washington College a two-year $88,750 Collaborative Research Grant in support of the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project's editorial operation at the University of Toronto. Outright funds are $38,750 with $50,000 conditionally awarded in NEH matching funds, provided that the like sum is raised through private support of the REED project. The entire amount is committed to the REED Editorial Office's preparation of REED collections for publication: Mary Washington College donated its indirect costs and the project director's reduced teaching load as cost-sharing contributions.

With $50,000 to raise in a short time, Professor Palmer will be contacting MRDS members, among others, for "eligible gifts" as defined by the "Federal Matching Fund Guidelines"; again through the good offices of Mary Washington College, those gifts will be deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes as charitable contributions. Although the monies of this NEH Collaborative Research Grant are not particularly awesome in practical terms, NEH funded only 33 such grants throughout the country in this 1997-1998 application round. Of those 33, which represent all of the NEH "collaborative research" programs collapsed into one funding competition, only seven were awarded to literature projects. For more detailed information on NEH research funding, see http://www.neh.gov/html/rec_awds.html (the NEH home page is www.neh.gov) and click on "Collaborative Research Programs, 1998." MRDS members also will find the REED electronic resources of interest at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html.

Barbara Palmer's e-mail address is bdpalmer@erols.com.

Upcoming Academic Meetings and Opportunities

MRDS at MLA 1999 IN CHICAGO

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: March 1, 1999

CARNIVAL AND POPULAR CULTURE IN MEDIEVAL DRAMA
Comparative papers welcome, especially those that link early cultural festivals with contemporary Carnivals throughout the world - African, Asian, European, and Caribbean as well as American analogues. We would like to focus on interdisciplinary and multimedia presentations as much as possible.

THE REPRESENTATION OF JEWS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STAGE
Papers that address dramatic (or para-dramatic) texts from a range of periods and in different languages are encouraged.

Send papers or proposals for both sessions to:

Jesse Hurlbut
jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu
4002 JKHB, Provo UT 84602
FAX (801) 378-6208

MEDIEVAL HORROR
Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK
10 July 1999

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: 20 December 1998

What did it mean to feel FEAR in the Middle Ages? What was it like to experience PAIN? What were the different circumstances generating REVULSION? How did one represent ABJECTION? Where was the pleasure in HORROR?

Proposals for papers c.20 minutes are sought from all disciplines in medieval and early modern studies which address the theme of 'horror' in any number of ways.

WHY HORROR?
At first sight, 'medieval horror' looks like an anachronism. In contemporary parlance, the term 'horror' conjures up images of Gothic novels, waxwork museums and 70s B-movies. But surely the Middle Ages were also an age of horror. Feelings of fear, disgust and pain were experienced in the medieval period no less than today. Death, famine, disease were ever-present realities. Representation was obsessed with generating strategies of revulsion, albeit to devotional ends - think of the lives of martyrs or images of Christ's passion, or the macabre, or the afterlife. Social groups such as women and Jews were stigmatised with reference to fables of physical deformity and 'horrifying' practices.

This conference will address the nuances of medieval horror by seeking to place emotions like 'fear' and 'abjection' and 'pain' in a cultural context. What were the particular resonances of the medieval sense of horror that set it apart from today? Where, in a culture obsessed with representing emotions of terror, was the pleasure in horror? How were feelings such as fear and pain harnessed to religious ends, for example in representations of hell and punishment? How were pollutant bodily fluids such as blood and faeces invested with connotations of danger? Why were certain social groups marginalised with reference to their terrifying characteristics? And can we speak of a medieval fear of ghosts and the undead? It is hoped that 'Medieval Horror' will provide an interdisciplinary forum in which to debate such questions.

Please send proposals, including a half-page abstract, to Bettina Bildhauer or Robert Mills, Pembroke College, Cambridge, CB2 1RF, UK or b221@hermes.cam.ac.uk or rtpm2@hermes.cam.ac.uk. Details of the above will also be posted on our website at http://www.pem.cam.ac.uk/conf/horr.htm or try the temporary location at http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/medart/horr1.htm.

FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PHENOMENOLOGY AESTHETICS & THE FINE ARTS
Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
16-18 April 1999

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: February 15, 1999

Harmony Between Man & the Universe in the Historical & Contemporary Perspective: Theatrum Mundi in Literature, Drama, Poetry, Music, Opera, Fine Arts, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Architecture & Landscape Gardens

I. ALL THE WORLD IS THE STAGE: festivities and celebrations; the visual language of all the arts dominated by that of theater; ritual and masks; mirror reflections; unity in diversity on stage or in celebrations created by the symbiosis of all the arts.

II. IDEAS OF WORLD HARMONY: Democritus: the essence and the happiness of mankind consists in harmony; Pythagorean cosmology: the harmonious combination of four elements; the microscopic soul of man and the gran teatro del mundo; How can the world soul (a religious concept), the regulation of the cosmos (a concept of physics), world harmony (a musical concept) and the soul of man (a psychological concept) be fused?

III. THE GLORIFICATION OF MUSIC BY MUSIC; THE GLORIFICATION OF MUSIC BY ALL THE ARTS: synaesthesia; echo poetry. How can music express the inner depths of human and cosmic nature? Hymns echoing the music of the universe.

IV. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: Gardens: Mirrors of Infinity; William Chambers: The Gardeners are not only Botanists but also Painters and Philosophers; the relationship of gardens with philosophy in the East and/or West; the infinite roof the sky that encompasses the gran teatro del mundo and its connection with the microcosmic soul of man.

V. THE MICROCOSM REFLECTING THE MACROCOSM: landscape architecture, sculptures, fountains, architecture, music, myth, masks, etc.; a mythical universe.

VI. A ROUND TABLE ON A. T. TYMINIECKA, LOGOS AND LIFE, CREATIVE EXPERIENCE & THE CRITIQUE OF REASON, Book 1, Analecta Husserliana, 1988: "The Primary Conditions of Human Existence."

Send Abstracts to:
Professor Marlies Kronegger, President of ASPAFA
Old Horticulture Bldg 313
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1112 U. S. A.
FAX 517-432-3844
kronegge@pilot.msu.edu

MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL MATERIALISMS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
Tempe, Arizona
February 18-20, 1999

The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies wil host its fifth annual conference. The program will include papers on specific artifacts and artistic commodities as well as the relationships between people's material world and the society around them. Jonathan J. G. Alexander (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) will deliver the plenary address entitled, "Adam Delving, Eve Spinning: Images of Work in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance."

"GENUS REGALE ET SACERDOTALE: THE IMAGE OF THE BISHOP AROUND THE MILLENNIUM"
University of Chicago
28-30 October 1999

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: 1 March 1999.

Keynote Speakers: Michel Parisse (Université de Paris I - Sorbonne), Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen (Schnütgen Museum-Köln), and Arnold Angenendt (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster).

Ruotger, the biographer of Brun, archbishop of Cologne and Otto the Great's brother, offers us an ideal image of the tenth-century bishop. As a dux and bishop, as a kinsman to emperors and a teacher of prelates, Brun seemed constantly to be pulled this way and that by the demands of his position. Yet, as Ruotger tells us, this external behavior was only the visible indication of Brun's deeper, "interior" purpose- the conversion and correction of his flock. Brun's ambivalent position between what would later be seen as opposed, "secular" and "sacred" worlds epitomized the bishop of his time. In many ways, Ruotger's portrayal of Brun drew upon an episcopal model reaching back to Gregory the Great's "Cura Pastoralis", one in which the bishop was to act as rector, doctor, preacher, governor, and priest. Neverthe-less, this ideal image of the bishop was called into question around the millennium by figures such as Rather of Verona, Atto of Vercelli, and Abbo of Fleury - a challenge which foreshadowed the reformmovements of the later eleventh century.

Ruotger's ideal "image", of course, was not the only one current in the post-Carolingian, pre-Gregorian period- a period in which bishops and episcopal institutions (as Timothy Reuter has pointed out) were the most homogeneous element in an increasingly regionalized Europe. This conference, therefore, will address the varied images of the bishop created around the turn of the millennium, c. 900- 1050. In particular, it is meant to examine the changing function and significance of the bishop in this period, as revealed by the various ways - political, historical, theological, legal, ritual, artistic, or literary - in which bishops represented themselves and were represented by those around them.

We invite papers (in English) of around twenty minutes in length from all fields and disciplines, addressing the conference theme. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Episcopal Insignia -- Episcopal Memoria -- The Bishop & Conversion -- The Bishop's Tomb Bishops and the Law -- Hagiography & Hagiology -- Episcopal Liturgy -- Bishops & Education -- The Bishop as Patron -- The Bishop's Family -- The Bishop as Builder -- Bishop and Town -- Episcopal Communities -- The Bishop as Ruler -- The Bishop as Artist

Address one-page abstracts, together with curriculum vitae, to:

University of Chicago Medieval Studies Workshop
Conference Organizing Committee
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
USA

E-mail to: chicago-medieval@uchicago.edu
Fax: 773/702-9861

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ASSOCIATION
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
May 20-23, 1999

Conference Theme: Marvels and Commonplaces in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The organizers of the 1999 meeting of RMMRA invite proposals for sessions and abstracts of papers on all aspects of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They are particularly interested in papers related to the meeting theme.

Program Committee Chairs:

ANNUAL MEDIEVAL ENGLISH THEATRE SYMPOSIUM
Edinburgh, Scotland
27 March 1999

Medieval Plays in Scotland is the topic for discussion, and the symposium will be followed by METh's twentieth birthday party. Sarah Carpenter is the local organiser, but enquiries should be sent to Pamela King, Dept. of English, University College of St Martin, Lancaster LA1 3JD, England; email p.king@ucsm.ac.uk.

1999 ROCKY MOUNTAIN MLA CONVENTION
Santa Fe, New Mexico
October 14 -16, 1999

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: March 1, 1999

Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama
Vivian Foss, Department of English, University of Wisconsin, 2524 Shorewood Drive, Oshkosh, WI  54901-1623; (920) 424-7278; foss@uwosh.edu.

http://rmmla.wsu.edu/rmmla/callForPapers/call99.asp

ASPECTS OF EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL DRAMA
Camerino, Italy
August 5-8, 1999 - Conference
August 1-8, 1999 - Medieval Festival
July 26 - August 6 - Medieval Drama Workshops

The fourth annual 'European Medieval Drama' conference, workshops and festival are being organized jointly by the European Medieval Drama Council and the University of Camerino.

The MEDIEVAL FESTIVAL will take place from 1 - 8 August 1999 when there will be: concerts of medieval music; plays presented in the open-air by companies from the USA, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Holland and Italy; street performers; street restaurants; a medieval joust; dancing; and a Latin mass with medieval choral music.

As a part of the activities, there will be a series of practical workshops on aspects of medieval drama.

A. THE PRINCIPAL WORKSHOPS
Each morning, Monday to Friday from 09.30-12.30, there will be a choice of six intensive workshops on aspects of medieval drama performance, each led by a renowned expert: 1. Mask Making and Articulated Costumes; 2. Silk Painting of Costumes and Carnival make-up; 3. European Medieval Dances; 4. Secular Medieval Choral Music; 5. The Fool in the Medieval Theatre - An Acting Workshop; 6. Physical and vocal preparation for medieval performances. Participants in each of these workshops will be involved in the presentation of a small final performance during the Festival.

B. THE SUBSIDIARY WORKSHOPS
Each afternoon there will be a choice of activities: either 1) an Italian language course for beginners or 2) a series of 2-session workshops including: The Medieval Art of Flag-throwing, Stilt-walking, Church bell-ringing, Long-bow archery, The recorder for beginners.

For more information, contact:
Sydney Higgins
Conference and Festival Organiser
'European Medieval Drama'
email gorgiano@unicam.camserv.it

THE THIRD WORLD CONFERENCE ON CARNIVAL
Trinidad and Tobago, October 19 - 24, 1999

CALL FOR PAPERS

Contact: Milla Cozart Riggio, English Department, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106. Tel: 860-297-2467; fax: 860-297-5258; email Milla.Riggio@mail.trincoll.edu.
AFTER JANUARY 10, 1999, Call Trinity College English Department 860-297-2455 for Professor Riggio's address in Trinidad and Tobago.

ANZAMEMS 2000. CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY: REPUBLICS NATIONS AND CULTURES
University of Sydney
February 1-4, 2000

CALL F0R PAPERS

Second Colloquium of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, formed in 1997 through the amalgamation of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Australasian Historians of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, will hold its second biennial conference at the University of Sydney, Australia, Tuesday to Friday, 1-4 February 2000.

Expressions of interest are sought from scholars in all fields of medieval and early modern studies. Proposals for papers and for sessions are invited, as well as more general enquiries.

In the year 2000, the University of Sydney, Australia's first University, will celebrate its sesquicentenary, the city of Sydney will be preparing for the Olympic Games in September, and the nation will be preparing for the centenary of Federation on 1 January 2001.

While no theme is set for the conference as a whole, the Organising Committee expects that some sessions will be organised around issues that relate to these events and the broad question of Constructing Identity: Republics, Nations and Cultures.

To indicate your interest in participating, or for further information as it becomes available, please contact:

Nerida Newbigin,
Convenor, ANZAMEMS,
Department of Italian, A26
University of Sydney, NSW, 2006
AUSTRALIA
E-mail: nerida.newbigin@italian.usyd.edu.au
Tel.: +61 (02) 9351 3584
Fax: +61 (02) 9351 3407
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/arts/departs/medieval/anzamems

Performances

ACTER
SPRING 1999 tour: The Merchant of Venice

Cynthia Dessen, General Manager, ACTER
csdessen@email.unc.edu
919-967-4265 (phone/fax)
http://www.unc.edu/depts/acter/
Mail to: 1100 Willow Drive
Chapel Hill NC 27514

Chad Engbers, a doctoral student at Catholic University, played the part of Herod in the CUA production of Pageant 19 (The Girdlers and Nailers Play of the Slaughter of the Innocents) from the York Cycle at the Toronto festival last June. He has now set up a website with a synopsis of the performance, lots of pictures, and some essays reflecting on what the experience meant to him and others involved in the performance.

http://www.campus.cua.edu/~engbers/ourprod.htm

To send Chad questions, comments, or feedback, write to him directly at: engbers@cua.edu

SITM: Report on the conference

Report on the Ninth International Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l'Étude du Théâtre Médiéval in Odense, Denmark, 3-9 August 1998

By Max Harris

SITM convenes in a different country once every three years. This time, the Centre for Medieval Studies at Denmark's University of Odense was the quietly efficient and warmly welcoming host.

A distinctive feature of SITM colloquia is the commitment not to arrange simultaneous sessions but instead to treat each session as a plenary session. This builds a real sense of collegiality as all are able to share the fruits of each other's research. Since presentations are kept to a maximum of fifteen minutes, there is also ample time for discussion. Papers this year were grouped under four general headings: Martyrdom and Saints' Plays, Farces and Farcical Elements, Easter Plays, and Audience and Reception. An additional session, devoted to the practical problems of presenting the Durham Sacrament Sequence in the life of a modern cathedral, was led by John McKinnel of Durham University and Dean John Arnold of Durham Cathedral.

It is perhaps unfair to single out particular papers for praise, but which of us will forget Elizabeth Baldwin's hilarious introduction to an unpublished seventeenth-century play, Musophilus, whose heroine donates her waste fluids for use as a kind of truth serum and is so named Urina? Bowing to popular demand, Elizabeth arranged a late afternoon read through of the entire play that provoked much laughter and the discovery of several previously unnoticed double-entendres.

Another attraction of SITM colloquia is the balance of scholarly papers and live medieval theatre. Five amateur companies brought productions to Odense, performing at various sites in the medieval centre of Odense and together being offered to the town as a Medieval Theatre Festival. Durham Medieval Theatre Company performed the York Last Judgement; Albion Dollege Theatre (USA) offered the less well-known Play of Saint Guiglielma; the Medieval Drama Group of Dundee staged Everyman; Femke Kramer's Theatre Company Marot, from the Netherlands, entertained us with a polished (and very bawdy) version of a sixteenth-century farce, Schaamstreken (Dirty Tricks); and the Sevilla University Group performed the English mystery play, Joseph's Doubt. This last play was ingeniously directed by Rafael Portillo, shifting unexpectedly from a restrained medieval style to that of a Spanish telenovela before returning, after Joseph's reassuring visitation from the angel, to medieval costume and delivery. The result, combined with some fine student acting, was to humanize the relationship between Joseph and Mary to a degree that I have never seen on stage before.

At the colloquium's closing business meeting, John Cartwright and Leif Søndergaard were elected President and Secretary of SITM for the next three years, Groningen (Netherlands) was confirmed as the site for the 2001 colloquium, and Camerino (Italy) was chosen as the probable site for 2004.

Digital Resources

Early European Drama Translation Series
http://www.acad.cua.edu/as/engl/eedt.htm

EDAM web page:
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/edam

Perform Web page
http://toisondor.byu.edu/perform/

Perform discussion group
To Subscribe, send email to: listserv@listserv.indiana.edu with the following line in the body of the message: subscribe PERFORM FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME

Perform Archives
http://listserv.indiana.edu/archives/perform.html

Poculi Ludique Societas: Medieval & Renaissance Players of Toronto
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~medieval/www/pls/

REED Web Page
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html

REED-L discussion group
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European Medieval Drama Council (with links to over 200 other Medieval Drama sites)
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/theatre/emd.htm

The Marlowe Society of America
www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/marlowesoc

Le Centre d'Études des textes Médiévaux de l'Université de Rennes
http://www.uhb.fr/alc/medieval

MRDS Business

Election of Officers
Nominations have been made for the two openings in the MRDS Council. Ballots are due to the Secretary by January 25, 1999.

Candidates include:

Shirley E. Carnahan has taught in the Comparative Literature and Humanities Dept. at the University of Colorado, Boulder, since 1985 (English Dept. before that: 1974-1985). Her most recent medieval performance publication is in Early Drama and Music (19, 2, Spring 97). She has given several papers at both Leeds and Kalamazoo, mainly on performance of medieval drama, and has directed many medieval plays, including both Towneley Shepherds' Plays, the Digby "Killing of the Children" and Heywood's "A Mery Play" (Johan Johan, Tib, and Sir Johan). She is a member of The Boulder Renaissance Consort. She has also worked for years with both the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Shakespeare Oratorio Society (actor, assistant director, music director).

Garrett PJ Epp is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he teaches primarily medieval and early modern drama literature, with an emphasis on theatre. He staged his first medieval play in 1983, slaughtering innocents for the PLS Chester Cycle; he still brings productions home to Toronto on occasion. He has also published essays on such issues as Brecht's influence on medieval drama and the hazards of treating the Towneley plays as a "cycle," as well as on John Bale's cross-dressing, sodomy and effeminacy in Mankind, and masculine flesh in the Latin plays of John Foxe; essays are forthcoming on Noah's Wife and domestic violence, and perhaps even on the Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge.

Eckehard Simon is currently collecting and editing the records of German non-religious theater (ca. 1370- 1520) and writing a history based on them. In the past, he has published on the German Neidhart plays, on Carnival plays, their manuscripts, and on carnival festivities. In 1991, he edited research reports on The Theatre of Medieval Europe.

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