Rhodes College to Host "Green Shakespeare" Symposium

"Green Shakespeare: A Symposium on Ecocriticism and the Bard" will bring together international scholars to discuss how ecological concepts and "green" issues apply to the interpretation of works by William Shakespeare.

The symposium will be held Friday, March 26, in Blount Auditorium of Buckman Hall from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

This will be a unique opportunity for audience members to converse with leading scholars in this emerging field of ecocriticism, which is the application of environmental studies to literature. For example, the discussion will explore ways in which Shakespeare's works explore the idea of "nature;" fantasies of rural retreat from the city and court; connections between humans and animals; anxieties about manipulation of genetic stock; and contemporary ecological disasters.

The event begins with a keynote lecture by Dr. Robert Watson of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on the "Ecology of Self," or permeable human boundaries in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Watson's lecture will be followed by a roundtable discussion about the "state of the field," with four respondents: Daniel Brayton (Middlebury College); Simon Estok (Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea); Sharon O’Dair (University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa); and Karen Raber (University of Mississippi).

The symposium is cosponsored by the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment and Rhodes' Environmental Program, with additional support from Rhodes' Center for Outreach in the Development of the Arts (CODA). Those with specific inquiries can contact Professor Scott L. Newstok at newstoks@rhodes.edu, or consult the Shakespeare at Rhodes website at http://www.rhodes.edu/shakespeare/

More about the speakers:

Robert Watson (UCLA)
Watson's recent study Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance won the 2007 Dietz Prize for best book in Renaissance Studies as well as the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment prize for the Best Book of Ecocriticism. Critics have praised this book as "the most powerful and wide-ranging 'green' reading of early modern literature that has yet emerged."

Daniel Brayton (Middlebury College)
Brayton is co-editor of the essay collection titled Ecocritical Shakespeare (Ashgate, forthcoming 2010) and is working on a book on Shakespeare and maritime studies.

Simon Estok (Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea) Estok is author of numerous essays on ecocritical Shakespeare in book collections and journals including Mosaic, PMLA, ISLE, Shakespeare Review, Literature and Environment.

Sharon O'Dair (University of Alabama)
Sharon O'Dair is author of Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars (Michigan, 2000) and the recent review essay on Shakespearean ecocriticism, "The State of the Green."

Karen Raber (University of Mississippi)
Raber is author of Dramatic Difference (Delaware, 2001), and co-editor of Early Modern Ecostudies. Her review essay "Recent Ecostudies in Tudor and Stuart Literature” appeared in ELR (Winter 2007).

About the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment

The Pearce Shakespeare Endowment was established in 2008 to support Shakespeare-related events at Rhodes College. Dr. Iris A. Pearce attended the college in the 1940s before graduating from Vanderbilt University. She later enrolled in medical school at the University of Tennessee and served as the first female internal medicine resident at John Gaston Hospital (now the Med). She eventually became the director of the City of Memphis Hospitals while serving as a professor at UT. Her bequest generously continues to support her lifelong enthusiasm for Shakespeare.

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