Seminar No. 3.6.

Title: Mediating the Mediterranean in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries.

Leaders:

Ton Hoenselaars (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University, USA)

Participants:

Rui Carvalho Homem (University of Oporto)
Raymond Gardette (University of Paris, IV (Sorbonne))
R. Chris Hassel (Vanderbilt University)
Diana E. Henderson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge)
Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University, Worcester)
Linda McJannet (Bentley College, Waltham)
Bindu Malieckal (Saint Anselm College, Manchester)
John McKellor Reid (University of the West of England)
Rachana Sachdev (Susquehanna University)
John D. Sanderson (University of Alicante
Peter Womack (University of East Anglia, Norwich)
 

Abstract:

This seminar takes its cue from Fernand Braudel's description of the Mediterranean as an area which ‘has no unity but
that created by the movements of men, the relationships they imply, and the routes they follow’. We invite papers that
address the continuing formation and reformulation of cultural identities in the works of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries, with a special emphasis on the formative impact of views of gender, race, religion, or ethics in the
broadest sense. We welcome attempts to relate Shakespeare's representation of island identities, ethnic encounters,
denominational conflicts, travel experiences and such like, with the ways in which such experiences were conveyed by his
fellow dramatists. Comparisons between the experience of the Mediterranean and that of, say, the North Sea basin will
enhance the discussion. We impose no limitations on the theoretical approach of the papers.