Scholars have long been interested in the effects of physical violence in non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama. This Midwest Modern Language Association panel hopes to expand such approaches to consider how the era's plays depict – and inflict – terror in less explicitly physical ways. How do social rifts, economic practices, and language gaps create terror? How do staged renditions of crime pamphlets and folktales exploit audience fears? How do social and psychological dimensions of violence complicate or complement bloodshed? How do plays involve (and implicate) audience members in their terrifying moments, and for what purpose? Papers on these and other issues of terror in non-Shakespearean plays are invited; those that consider terror's relationship to comedy are particularly welcome, and treatments of performance are encouraged. Please submit 250 word abstracts by June 25 to nunn@uakron.edu.
The M/MLA will meet in Chicago this year, November 4-7. More information on the conference is available at http://luc.edu/mmla/.
