Configuring ‘World Theatre’

Keynote speaker: Professor Osita Okagbue (Professor of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths University of London). Conference organisers: Julia Prest and Michael Wood (University of Edinburgh)

The purpose of the conference is to unite scholars from Modern Languages departments and related disciplines within the Arts and Humanities for two days of discussion on the topic of World Theatre. Within the Anglophone and European contexts, ‘World Theatre’ still tends to be understood as referring to the research of separate national theatrical traditions and practices from across the globe or giving overviews of individual theorists and practitioners from outside of the European and American world. Yet there is much that theatre research can gain from the methodologies and insights of World Literature research and Transnational Studies.

While World Literature has become a well-established paradigm for Modern Languages research in recent decades, this conference seeks to promote the field of World Theatre in Scotland and beyond. Bringing researchers who specialise on theatre within different language areas and scholars from related disciplines into conversation with each other and with existing theories of World Literature and Transnationality, we hope to find exciting new avenues for on-going and future scholarship, including collaborative research.

The conference will feature a combination of research papers and discussions on a wide and varied range of topics led by scholars from institutions across the world. Participants will be invited to attend a theatre performance in Edinburgh on 20th June that will form the basis for discussion and debate the following day.

Image: Native American tribal Ceremonies in Philadelphia, by John Lewis Krimmel and Pavel Svinyin (1811-1813).

BOOKING TO OPEN SHORTLY

Supported by the Institute of Modern Languages Research Regional Conference Scheme, OWRI Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community – Translingual Strand, with additional support from the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews and the British Academy.