47th Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
“Shakespeare and the Mind”
October 24-26, 2024
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
The OVSC welcomes papers and roundtables on all topics related to a general theme of Shakespeare and the mind. How did the early moderns conceptualize thought, emotion, and instinct—and how does Shakespeare’s corpus reflect or resist those models? How has the renaissance influenced modern and contemporary understandings of thought, insight, or the unconscious? Do Shakespeare’s texts—or their adaptations or staging—provide any value for clinicians or therapists treating patients suffering from trauma or psychiatric disorders? In short, what did Shakespeare think about the act of thinking?
We welcome papers and projects taking any number of critical approaches, be they formalist, historicist, or theoretical. Projects focused on Shakespeare’s reception, adaptation, and performance, as well as papers focused on Shakespeare’s contemporaries (i.e., other early modern authors, artists, and thinkers) are also welcome. We especially encourage papers that adopt an interdisciplinary approach. The conference is open to graduate students for regular sessions and to undergraduate students for roundtable seminars. Graduate students and undergraduate students are encouraged to submit papers for the M. Rick Smith Memorial Prize and the Julia R. Lupton Graduate Prize.