6th Annual GOTH Symposium - CfP

The Annual GOTH Symposium welcomes scholars from within and outside The Open University for 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:
   • 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
   • 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.
   • 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)
   • Gender, race, disability and/or otherness in creative writing (Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, script), with topics including but not limited to:
     • Dark tourism and memorialisation
     • Ekphrasis
     • Representing otherness and outsiders in creative writing
     • The Gothic genre in contemporary writing

Register for the event

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

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Inquiries on any aspect of the symposium may be emailed to FASS-GOTH-Admin@open.ac.uk.

About the committee:

M A Katritzky – Director, GOTH & Professor of Theatre Studies, OU, ECW
Dr Andrew Murray, GOTH EDI Co-ordinator, Lecturer in Art History, OU
Mrs Jennie Owen, GOTH Health & Safety Co-ordinator, Lecturer in Creative Writing, OU, ECW.
Isabelle Lepore, GOTH PG Forum Convenor (OU, ECW)