Tuesday 3rd February 2015

Professor Jose Roberto O'Shea, Universidade de Santa Catarina, Brazil and Visiting Fellow with Global Shakespeare

"Desacralising Shakespeare’s ‘Word’ through Linguistic and Cultural Translation"

This paper will address ways in which translation-both in its linguistic and cultural dimensions-can bring about what O Shea calls the "desacralisation" of Shakespeare’s Word. His working hypothesis is that contexts in which Shakespeare is explored without his language and culture may entail a relative lack of "reverence" that, in turn, may enable new thematic and aesthetic explorations of the playwright's dramatic poetry.

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Tuesday 10th February 2015

Introduction to Global Shakespeare by Academic Director Professor David Schalkwyk ,Warwick and QMUL including talks by Global Shakespeare Research Fellows:

"Does the text even matter? Translations of Shakespeare via India and the UK" by Dr Preti Taneja

What happens when Shakespeare's plays are performed in languages other than English, for audiences who neither know the new language or the source text? Considering three approaches to this in contrast with the reception of Shakespeare performed in English by a multi-racial cast the paper considers what happens to the plays when Shakespeare is deprived of his tongue.

"Sheikhspeare: Performing the Bard in the Arabian Gulf" by Dr Katherine Hennessey

Katherine's current research examines Shakespearean productions across the Arabian Peninsula as they relate to the Gulf's burgeoning 'knowledge economy.' This presentation will focus in particular on the significance of recent opera and dance productions inspired by Shakespeare's work at the magnificent Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman

"How to do Things with Global Shakespeare" by Professor Alexa Huang, George Washington University and Fulbright Global Shakespeare Fellow

How did “global” and Shakespeare become near synonyms? This illustrated presentation examines the early modern and modern fascination with the figure of the globe and the ideal of "going global." Performances of Shakespeares that pass through different historical and geographical spaces can teach us a great deal about the formation of the Shakespearean canon, cultural diplomacy, and world cultures. With a new research methodology, this presentation suggests ways to transform global Shakespeares from centerpieces in exotic displays into a more productive site for critical reflection on globalization.

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Tuesday 17th February 2015

Dr Tom Cheesman, Swansea University

"Mapping Shakespeare Translations: Experiments with Visualization"

Digital visualization techniques offer new ways of making texts and text corpora much more widely accessible, and can make it infinitely easier to explore, compare and analyse them than it was when we could only manipulate versions on paper. This paper will explore ongoing experiments which are taking advantage of this approach including an interface which uses algorithms to map the variable diversity within some 40 German translations of Othello (1766-2012) onto an English text, segment by segment.