The ISS at the Modern Language Association Meeting

Dec. 27-30, 2006, Philadelphia

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

Has concluded for 2006 but all MLA members are welcome to attend

 the special Shaw session # 227 which will take place 1:45-3:00 pm

Thursday, 28 December, in room 413 of the Philadelphia Marriott.

 

MLA members can discover how to register

for the 2006 MLA convention by going to

http://www.mla.org/convention.

 

GENERAL TOPIC: “Bernard Shaw at 150:  Theater, Criticism, Contemporaneity

 

In acknowledgment of Bernard Shaw’s sesquicentennial, the International Shaw Society is sponsoring a special session at the 2006 MLA December meeting that will explore Shaw's writings, both dramatic and non-dramatic, in a contemporary context.  Since Shaw often figured himself as a prophet, in what ways did Shaw anticipate twenty-first century approaches to drama, theater, performance, social reform, politics, and critical and literary theory?  How does Shaw's theatrical-critical project still speak to us today? Approaches grounded in either current events and mass culture (e.g., "Creative Evolution," “Creationism,” and “Intelligent Design” in Kansas and Dover, Pennsylvania) or contemporary (inter)disciplinary and theoretical discourses (e.g., Back to Methuselah and the Post-Human) are encouraged.   Other possibilities for areas of discussion include stage practices and metadrama; gender roles, family issues, and marriage; social class, poverty, and war; religion and “Science Studies;” deconstruction, poststructuralism, and the death of theory; depth psychology; narrative, history, literary/dramatic historiography, and periodization; film, video, television, hypertext, and other New Media, etc.     

 

The co-coordinators of the session will be Charles Joseph Del Dotto of Duke University and Jean Reynolds of Polk Community College.  You must be a member of the MLA by April 7, 2006 to participate in the session.   You need not be a member of the ISS to participate, but you are welcome to join.   See the homepage of the International Shaw Society at www.shawsociety.org for an application.