About the Conference
Shakespeare, Traffics, Tropics is the 3rd biennial conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association jointly hosted by the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines Diliman. It features leading Shakespearean scholars and theatre practitioners from around the globe with a keen interest in Shakespeare as produced in and by Asia and a mini-festival of Shakespearean performances from Japan and the Philippines.
The conference is scheduled on May 28-30, 2018 at the Arete, the new creative and innovation hub of the Ateneo de Manila University and at the College of Arts and Letters of UP Diliman. Prof. Peter Holland, Chairman of the International Shakespeare Association, will deliver the keynote address. A second keynote speaker is also under consideration. The conference will include plenary, panel, and seminar sessions on several aspects of Shakespearean pedagogy, publication, translation, adaptation, and theatrical histories in various Asian locations.
Performances to be staged include:
· The Tempest by the Yamanote Jijoshe company of Tokyo directed by Masahiro Yasuda
· Taming of the Shrew by an Ateneo theater group to be directed by Prof. Ian McClennan (Thornloe University, Canada),
· Rdu3, a contemporary Philippine take on Shakespeare’s Richard III to be co-directed by Anton Juan (University of Notre Dame, USA) and Ricardo Abad (Ateneo de Manila)
Spread out over 7, 641 tropical islands speaking 78 languages, the Philippines has a rich history combining Asian, European, and American influences. It is no stranger to traffic, in various forms, and negotiating this vibrant, colorful, and sometimes chaotic mix, often entails giving in to an easygoing way of life and enjoying oneself along the way. Quezon City, the conference site, is the most populous city of Metropolitan Manila that acts as the country’s political, social, economic, cultural, and educational center. The adjacent university campuses of the Ateneo and UP are sprawling green spaces that offer a respite from the flurry of life in one of the world’s largest cities.
CALL FOR PAPER AND SEMINAR PROPOSALS
Traffic is both a product of robust movements but can also refer to points of entanglements, both flows and disruptions that arise from global exchanges in goods, people, and even, Shakespeare. The Conference welcomes papers that use the idea of traffic whether construed as mobility, immobility, trade, enterprise, translation, exchange –- licit or illicit -- as a key concept to contemporize Shakespeare and his place in today’s world. It seeks to explore Shakespeare as both purveyor and product, as either agent or victim of commodification, as subject and object of a wide array of linguistic, theatrical, economic, political, and social transactions. Papers may also take off from the prologue in Romeo and Juliet—“the two-hours traffic of the stage” – and revolve around performance and intercultural movements implied in Asian Shakespearean performances. A secondary theme, Shakespearean Tropics, is not only a nod to the conference location but also seeks to explore tropical Asian Shakespeare as a potentially distinct body of work with unique connections to tropical worlds elsewhere.
Topics may include but are not limited to —
- The Shakespearean Trade
- Shakespearean Entrepreneurs Shakespeare and Cultural Exchange
- Shakespeare and the Global Popular
- Shakespeare and/as Commodity Transactional Shakespeare
- Archives and Inventories
- Shakespearean stocks in global markets
- Shakespeare and Exploitation
- Theatrical Trades, Human Trafficking, and Migration
- Materialist Approaches to Shakespeare
- Shakespearean Performance Economies in Asia
- Shakespeare and the Book Trade
- The Travelling Theatre
- Shakespeare in the Tropics
- Hot Shakespeare
Selected papers from the conference will be published as a special issue of Kritika Kultura, a Thomson-Reuters-indexed and Scopus-listed internationally refereed online journal on literary, language and cultural studies published by the Ateneo de Manila University.
Submission Guidelines
The conference includes both paper sessions and seminars. Graduate students are welcome.
(1) Paper: please submit a 250-word abstract, plus a short, 100-word bio.
(2) Seminar: please submit a 250-word description of the seminar, plus a short bio including a summary of your previous seminar experience.
(3) Deadline: Deadline for submission is 15 September 2017. Results will be announced in October 2017. A second call for seminar papers will also be released.
Contact
Submissions and queries should be sent to asa2018@ateneo.edu or admin@AsianShakespeare.org.
For conference updates, please visit AsianShakespeare.org or the conference website at asianshakespeare2018.com
