CALL FOR PAPERS
Shakespeare: Journal of British Shakespeare Association special issue
"Global Shakespeare"
Deadline: September 30, 2011
The special issue welcomes papers on Shakespeare in performance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that participate in or initiate debates—theory, praxis, reception—worldwide. During his lifetime, Shakespeare’s plays were performed in Europe and subsequently taken to remote corners of the globe, including Sierra Leone, Socotra, and colonial Indonesia. Performances in England also had a global flair. European visitors such as Thomas Platter witnessed the plays on stage at the Globe (1599) and left behind diary records. Four centuries on, there has been a sea change. In theatre, Shakespeare has been recruited, exemplified, resisted, and debated in post/colonial encounters, in the international avant-garde led by Ariane Mnouchkine, Ninagawa Yukio, Peter Brook, Tadashi Suzuki, and others, and in the circuits of global politics and tourism in late capitalist societies.
As artists reconstruct various traditions, critics are also troubling narrowly defined concept of cultural authenticity. What are the new paradigms that can help us avoid replicating the old author-centered textuality in performance criticism? What critical resources might we bring to the task of interpreting the behaviors and signs in performance? What is the role of local and global spectators? More importantly, what is the task of criticism as it deals with the transformations of Shakespeare and various performance idioms?
Research articles in this issue will take stock of the worldwide histories of performance and criticism to uncover any blind spots in current methodologies to study the theoretical and artistic implications of Shakespeare and the cultures of diaspora, the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Commonwealth countries, Europe, Russia, Africa, the Arab world, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.
In addition, this issue will also feature a section devoted to recent adaptations in English and other languages.
We invite two types of submissions --
• Research article: criticism (5,000-8,000 words)
• Short performance reviews (1,000-2,000 words)
• Short performance reviews (1,000-2,000 words)
Please follow the Journal's Instructions for Authors:
Submissions--WORD (.doc) file, double-spaced, 12-point font; no .docx files please--or queries to be emailed to Alex Huang at the following address:
