5th Annual GOTH Symposium (CfP)

The Annual GOTH Symposium welcomes scholars from within and outside The Open University for two days of productive interdisciplinary discussion and debate. The Program Committee invites proposals for presentations focusing on any aspects of gender and/or otherness in creative writing or pre-modern drama, literature and visual culture, in two formats:

1. Postgraduate students only: 5-minute lightning papers on any aspects of human gender and otherness in creative writing or drama, literature and/or visual culture.
2. Open call: 15-minute papers focusing on any aspects of gender and otherness in creative writing or drama, literature and/or visual culture, with particular emphasis on:
   • Gender, race, disability and/or human physical otherness in religious and secular medieval and early modern theatre with topics including but not limited to:
     • performed otherness
     • otherness in secular dramatic texts
     • otherness in religious drama (eg convent drama, liturgical drama within the church, performances of Biblical episodes or Saint's lives in religious and/or secular spaces).
     • understanding performed otherness through the study of performativity, gesture, costume, crossdressing and/or textiles.
   • Gender, race, disability and/or otherness in creative writing, with topics including but not limited to:
     • Dark tourism
     • Ekphrasis
     • Milton Keynes
   • Female patrons and the fashioning of gender in medieval and early modern literary, dramatic and visual arts, with topics including but not limited to:
     • the role of gender in cultural creation, performance and patronage
     • cultural patronage as a pathway to female legal power and status.
     • Ways of using gender, costume, cross-dressing and textiles to study and reframe dramatic narrative (eg women as 'story-weavers' /embroiderers of vestments/costumes).
   • The Open University Medieval and Early Modern Research Group guest panel:
     Radical Otherness? 
     Utopia and other ideal societies in the medieval and early modern world, with topics including but not limited to:
     • Self and other in visual, literary and musical utopias
     • Gender, race, age and disability
     • Self and other in monastic and other ideal communities

Please submit your proposal (300 words max) and academic bio (150 words max) on or before the CFP deadline of 28 February 2025, to m.a.katritzky@open.ac.uk & FASS-GOTH-Admin@open.ac.uk. All presenters who participate in the full two days of the symposium will be provided with 1 night of paid accommodation (2 nights for non-UK presenters). If you wish to be considered for a travel bursary, please include a brief statement explaining what sum is requested and why.

Further information on the event and registration is being posted on the GOTH website as it becomes available.

Circulated on behalf of the GOTH Committee:    

• M A Katritzky – Director, GOTH & Professor of Theatre Studies.
• Dr Andrew Murray, GOTH EDI Co-ordinator, Lecturer in Art History.
• Mrs Jennie Owen, GOTH Health & Safety Co-ordinator, Lecturer in Creative Writing.
• Dr Chloe Fairbanks, GOTH Consultant
• Isabelle Lepore, GOTH Scholar & PG Forum Co-convenor (incoming)
• Kim Pratt & Antonia Saunders, PG Forum Co-convenors (outgoing).