Tara L. Lyons and I are excited to finally share the news that the trustees of the Shakespeare Association of America have accepted our panel Shared Archives, New Methods: Book History and Theater History Across Media for the organization's next annual meeting in Atlanta. The panel brings together book historians and theater historiansto explore new approaches of attending to an overlapping archive of materials related to the performance and publication of early modern plays. We're especially pleased that SAA is willing to let us experiment with format and mount a panel of short talks (±8 minutes each). We hope that these lightning papers will yield a lively and provocative conversation about materiality, method, and media.
Read more'Shakespeare's Theatrical Documents': Text ↔ Performance, &c.
I had the privilege of participating in this weekend’s Folger Institute symposium, “Shakespeare’s Theatrical Documents.” What follows is an attempt to synthesize some of the main threads of thought that emerged out of the weekend. These comments represent my own take-aways from the event. If my account seems abstract, it's only because I don't want to speak for the other participants, whose exceptional work for the symposium will surely find its way into a more public place over the next few years.
Organized by Tiffany Stern (Oxford University) and Owen Williams (Folger Institute), the symposium was designed to...
Read moreSo, You Say You Need To Write?
For me, institutional reading rooms—the old and new reading rooms at the Folger or the Rare Books & Music Reading Room at the British Library, for example—are the best places to work, and not only because they minimize the distractions that come with working at home or in my department office. I thrive on the energy of those quietly working around me and, I'll admit, the thought of others catching a glimpse of Twitter or email open on my screen. Whether they know it or not, others sharing the space hold me accountable to my research agenda and, more importantly, writing goals. That's the reason why I installed myself in the special collections reading room of my PhD-granting university to write the last two chapters and introduction of my dissertation, and it's why I've been finding ways to replicate the sense of shared endeavor virtually for the past few months.
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