Speaker: Elizabeth Dieterich, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract: »This paper explores historical and contemporary approaches to staging sexual violence and trauma in Renaissance drama, considering also how contemporary theatremakers have shifted their approaches to staging such content in light of political movements such as #MeToo. The recent cognitive turn and growth of affect studies within humanities scholarship allows for deeper consideration of the internal processes of actors and audiences in the past as well as in the present and the ways in which process-driven, embodied performance can inform our scholarly understandings of dramatic texts. Thus, focusing on productions of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, this research puts critical scholarship into conversation with accounts by theatremakers in order to explore the effects of participating in staged violence and trauma, whether as performer or spectator, and also to investigate what responsibility directors, actors, and scholars have in ethically interpreting sexual violence and trauma for audiences.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of England / Elizabethan era | Literature: English literature / William Shakespeare | Literature: Rape in fiction / Titus Andronicus | Sex and the law: Sexual violence