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Genre and Adaptation
The 45th Annual
Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
October 27-29, 2022
The University of Akron
The Cummings Center For the History of Psychology
73 South College Street
We invite you to visit the National Museum of Psychology on the first floor and the Institute for Human Science and Culture galleries on the fourth floor. Panels will allow a maximum of 20 minutes per presentation, giving time for discussion and Q and A, also allowing for a 10-minute break before the next session.
THURSDAY, October 27th
1:00-4:00 p.m: Registration
Third Floor of the Cummings Center
2:30-3:50 p.m.
Panel 1: Room 307
Women from Another Time
Chair: Anne-Marie Walkowicz, Central State University
Lindsey Simon-Jones, Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus
Adapting Female Agency: Representing Medieval and Classical Women in the Tudor Interlude
Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, The Ohio State University, Mansfield
Beyond Misogyny? Adapting Timon’s Masque in 2020
Ashley Worthington, John Carroll University
The Imperial Jointress: Adapting Gertrude’s Body
Panel 2: Room 308
Women in Comedies: New Perspectives
Chair: Anthony Guy Patricia, Concord University
Grace Maier, The University of Akron
The Power of Early Modern Maternity: The Patriarchy’s Greatest Fear
Rebecca Hixon, The University of Michigan
Romancing the Shrew, Redeeming the Tamer: Romcom Adaptations and The Taming of the Shrew’s Pop-Feminist Paradox
David George, Urbana University
Happy Outcomes for The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet
4:00-5:20 pm
Panel 3: Room 307
Genre, Reconsidered
Chair: James Newlin, Case Western Reserve University
Byron Nelson, West Virginia University
“What World Is This?”: The Conflation of Genres in Pericles
Robert Pierce, Oberlin College
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Comical Satire
Gabriel A. Rieger, Concord University
“What dish o’ poison has she dressed her!”: Queerness, Fascism, and Adaptation in Twelfth Night
4:00-5:20 pm
Panel 4: Room 308
Undergraduate Seminar
Chair: Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, The Ohio State University, Mansfield
Alexandra Benninghoff, The University of Akron
Interpretation: The Deceiving Word and Telling Tone
Adam Keeler, Owens Community College
Shakespeare? In This Economy???
Kylee Beth Strader, Marietta College
Oedipus and his Complexes; Hamlet’s Influence
Sydni Wilson, Marietta College
Milton’s Subversion to Idolatry
6 p.m.
Happy Hour
Akronym Brewing
58 E. Market Street
Akron, OH 44308
*****
FRIDAY October 28th
8:30 a.m.-noon: Registration
Third Floor of the Cummings Center
9:00-10:20 a.m.
Panel 5: Room 307
Audience Connections
Chair: Emily Detmer-Goebel, Northern Kentucky University
Russ Bodi, Owens Community College
Caliban’s Loose End: A Prisoners’ Dilemma
Lisa Starks, University of South Florida
Between Two Worlds: The Dybbuk, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and Reparative Tragedy
Andy Felt, The Theatre at Marietta College,
Conceptualizing Shakespeare for a Modern Audience
Panel 6: Room 308
History, Then and Now
Chair: Gabriel A. Rieger, Concord University
Grace Tiffany, Western Michigan University
Shakespeare Adapts
Philip Goldfarb Styrt, St. Ambrose University
Reading Jonson Reading Republican Rome: Turning History into Drama
Anne-Marie Walkowicz, Central State University
History Has Its Eyes On You: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as a Shakespearean History Play
10:30-11:00 a.m.
Coffee/Tea at Gathering Space
11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Panel 7: Room 307
New Readings of Renaissance Texts
Chair: Russ Bodi, Owens Community College
Charles Conaway, University of Southern Indiana
Reading the Multiverse
Anthony Guy Patricia, Concord University
Act 1, Scene 1 of King Lear in Slow Motion: Shakespeare Criticism as Adaptable Genre
Elissa Wolf, Chicago Youth Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Asides
12:30-2:00 p.m.
Luncheon
The Williams Honors College Lounge
PLENARY SESSION
2:30-4:00 p.m.
The Cummings Center 307
Sujata Iyengar, The University of Georgia
“Artists’ Books and Fine-Press Editions as Shakespearean Adaptations”
This talk, drawn from Iyengar’s ongoing investigation of contemporary artists’ books as critical, editorial, and aesthetic interventions into Shakespeare studies, briefly identifies the cognitive and print affordances that enable readers to navigate books, contextualizes them in light of contemporary neuroscientific discoveries surrounding human literacy, and discusses aspects of bookness such as layout, binding, typography, paper, and construction as aspects of theatrical or quasi-theatrical immersion.
Sujata Iyengar specializes in English Renaissance Literature, Shakespearean Adaptation and Appropriation, and Book History and Arts.
Dr. Iyengar spent academic year 2014-2015 on a Study in a Second Discipline Fellowship at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, taking courses in Letterpress, Paper-making, Book Arts and Typography. Her talk for OVSC is drawn from her current project, “Shakespeare and the Art of the Book,” which builds on the insights she gained as an apprentice book artist and printer.
4:00-5:30 p.m.
Panel 8: Room 307
Adapting Shakespeare for Contemporary Culture
Chair: Lisa Starks, University of South Florida
Amy Scott-Douglass, Lorain County Community College
Shakespeare, Stark, and Spider-Man: Far from Home
Bethany Decker, The University of Akron
A Mouth Too Full: Domination, Consumption, Kitchens, and Witches in Macbeth
Suzanne Delle, York College of Pennsylvania
Shakespeare: Beyond the Elizabethan / Students: Beyond the Grades
4:00-5:30 p.m.
Panel 9: Room 308
Theorizing Adaptation
Chair: Charles Conaway, University of Southern Indiana
David Higbee Williams, The University of Michigan
The Murder is the Medium: Andronican Adaptation in Theatre of Blood
Jimmy Newlin, Case Western Reserve University
Reading Shakespeare as a Faithful Subject
Stephannie Gearhart, Bowling Green State University
“Dear William Shakespeare”: Derek Jarman’s Adaptations in Mrs. Thatcher’s Britain
Shakespeare and Adaptation in Performance
6:00 p.m.
Daum Theatre in Kolbe Hall
Dane CT Leasure; Associate Lecturer – Theatre Arts (University of Akron), Ph.D. student (Bowling Green State University), and Executive Artistic Director – Rubber City Theatre
The focus of this presentation is highlighting my work with Shakespeare and adapting the work to serve modern audiences. The presentation includes a focus on my 2017 Hamlet, which imposed a concept of a modern university setting, my 2016 production of Lear which was an adaptation of King Lear with Lear as a woman set with the backdrop of the failing rubber industries of the 1970s, and finally looking at the adaptation of Tame and On the Line which were retellings of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
*****
SATURDAY, October 29th
Registration Starting at 8:30 a.m.
Third Floor of the Cummings Center
9:00-10:20
Panel 10: Room 307
Genealogies of Race and Performance
Chair: Hillary Nunn, The University of Akron
Nathanial B. Smith, Central Michigan University
Genre Matters: Black Lives and the Watch in Kenny Leon’s Much Ado about Nothing (2019) and Geoffrey Sax’s Othello (2001)
Carol Mejia LaPerle, Wright State University
Weakness of Will and Othello’s Self-Killing
Laura DeLuca, Carnegie Mellon University
Ancient Royalty on the English Stage: A Shakespearean Genealogy
Panel 11: Room 308
Watching Shakespeare
Chair: Stephannie Gearhart, Bowling Green State University
Rebecca Trumino, St. John’s University
Understanding Shakespeare with YouTube and Humor
Joseph Sullivan, Marietta College
Contextualizing “Kill Claudio” in the Age of YouTube
Daniel F. Gates, Saginaw Valley State University
Filming the “Unscene”: The Waiting-Gentlewoman on the Margin of Much Ado about Nothing
10:30-11:00 a.m.
Coffee/Tea at Gathering Space
OVSC Board Meeting
PLENARY SESSION
11:00-12:30
The Cummings Center 307
Kirsten N. Mendoza, University of Dayton
Embodiment on the Stage and Screen: Representations of Coercion and Consent in 1 Henry VI
Contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and the polarizing responses they evoke make plain the heated politics of embodiment caught between ethical imperatives for social justice and conservative calls for historical accuracy and authenticity. Rather than view justice and historicity as mutually exclusive, this talk argues that it is precisely through the multi-layered history inscribed on bodies that Shakespearean performances have the potential to have audiences reckon with ingrained forms of discrimination that have led to oppression and acts of violence both in the early modern period and in our twenty-first century. Through a comparison of the initial seduction scene between Suffolk and Margaret in 1 Henry VI by the The Royal Shakespeare Company (1965), the English Shakespeare Company (1991), and the BBC series The Hollow Crown, this talk will consider how the various significations of bodies shift over time and how attendance to such shifts are particularly important for adaptations that invite critical interpretations of the fraught dynamics of seduction, coercion, and consent.
Kirsten N. Mendoza is an Assistant Professor of English and Human Rights. Her first book project, A Politics of Touch: The Racialization of Consent in Early Modern English Literature, examines the conceptual ties that link shifting 16th and 17th century discourses on sexual consent with England’s colonial endeavors, involvement in the slave trade and global mercantile pursuits. Her work has appeared or is
forthcoming in Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Bulletin, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, The Norton Critical Edition of Doctor Faustus, Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature, Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now, and Arden of Faversham: A Critical Reader. Her research has been supported with grants from the Huntington Library, Newberry Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
SAVE THE DATE:
OVSC 2023 coming next October to the University of Dayton
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The Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference thanks the following people for their generous support of the 2022 conference.
- The Cummings Center for the History of Psychology
Dr. Jodi Kearns, Director, Institute for Human Science and Culture
The University of Akron Department of English and its chair, Professor Mary Biddinger
The College of Arts and Sciences and Dean Mitchell McKinney
Dane Leasure, School of Dance, Theatre and Arts Administration and Executive Artistic Director of
Rubber City Theatre
Local Organizing Committee
- Dorothy Gruich, The Cummings Center
Elizabeth Rhoades, The University of Akron Department of English
Kate Tasseff, The University Akron Department of English
Hillary Nunn, The University of Akron Department of English
Jennifer Hebert, The University of Akron Department of English
Ohio Valley Shakespeare Program Committee
- Stephannie Gearhart, Bowling Green State University
Carol Mejia LaPerle, Wright State University
Dane Leasure, The University of Akron
Hillary Nunn, The University of Akron
Lisa Rhoades, The University of Akron
The University of Akron is located on lands that have been home to many diverse nations, including the Ohio Seneca and Cayuga, the Lenni Lenape (Delaware), the Miami, the Shawnee, the Wyandot (Wendat), the Ottawa (Odawa) and the Ojibwe Nations. These lands were ceded in the 1805 Treaty of Fort Industry and the forced removal of tribes through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The University of Akron pays respect to the land and lives of Indigenous Nations past and present, and is committed to a process of continual learning, reflection, and reconciliation.