Conference Description

In recent years, early modern criticism has shown a marked interest in the concept of what constitutes transgression, the liminal and the marginal. Building upon this significant trend, a two-day conference will take place in Trinity College Dublin on August 6th and 7th 2010 exploring the representation and performance of transgression in Tudor and Stuart literature. Funding has been provided for the event by The School of English at Trinity College Dublin, The School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin, and The Society for Renaissance Studies.




Plenary Speakers:



Prof. Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University)


Dr. Thomas Rist (University of Aberdeen)


& Prof. Danielle Clarke (University College Dublin)



The two-day conference examines the period’s insistent awareness of transgressive persons, places and things, deviant behaviours and communities, and it attends to discourses on both real and imagined threats. Papers will be sought on a range of diverse yet related topics including: the construction and contravention of society’s norms; rules and regulatory bodies; violation and subversion; heresy and orthodoxy; and treason and legal corruption. In bringing together researchers – from postgraduates to early career academics to established scholars – the conference will exhibit a vista of current critical approaches to Renaissance literature. The conference is an inter-institutional event between Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, and aims to further existing links, and foster new networks of scholarship, between universities in Ireland, the UK, and further afield.







Friday, July 16, 2010

Schedule of Speakers for Staging Transgression

Friday, 6th August 2010


Location for all panels: Room 4050a, Fourth floor, Arts and Humanities Building, Trinity College Dublin (not room 4053 as previously advertised)


12.30 Conference Registration

12.50 Opening Remarks - Dr. Rory Loughnane (Trinity College Dublin)


1pm Panel 1 – Murder and mayhem

Chair – Dr. Kate Roddy (Trinity College Dublin)

Emily O’Brien (Trinity College Dublin)
A Crying Sin: Representing Murder

Dr. Andrew Power (Trinity College Dublin)
Conventional Transgressive Women in Renaissance Tragedy


2pm Panel 2 – Mock trials and comic transgressors

Chair – Edel Semple (University College Dublin)
Postgraduate Respondent – Kathleen Davies (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.)

Hanna Koz’myk (Zaporizhya National University, Ukraine)
Laughter in English Renaissance Jest as a Strategy of Transgressive Practices Encouragement

Derek Dunne (Trinity College Dublin)
Gesta Grayorum: Staged Transgression at the Inns of Court

Judit Mudriczki (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary)
The Early Modern Dramaturgy of Indecent Courtly Behaviour in the Mock Trial Scene of King Lear


3.15 Break with refreshments


3.30 Panel 3 – Transgression as opportunity

Chair – Dr. Rory Loughnane (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr. Andrea Lobensommer (Ludwig-Maximilian University, München, Germany)
Transgression as a Means of Learning

Dr. Rob Carson (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, NY, U.S.A.)
Reconfiguring Transgression in Richard II


4.30 Plenary 1 – Prof. Danielle Clarke (University College Dublin)
Speaking Out of Turn/Turning Speech: Gender, Language and Transgression in Early Modern England


5.40 Wine reception (room 4017)

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Saturday 7th


9am Refreshments


9.30 Plenary 2 – Dr. Thomas Rist (University of Aberdeen)
Renaissance Catharsis: Embodying Transgression in Shakespeare’s Theatre


10.40 Panel 4 – Fracturing the faith

Chair – Dr. Margaret Downs-Gamble (West Point, U.S Military Academy)

Dr. Mark Sweetnam (Trinity College Dublin)
Transgressing the Arcana Imperii: John Donne and the Unsearchable Councils of God

Dr. John Tangney (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Transgression as Transcendence in Early Modern Writing

Dr. Darragh Greene (Trinity College Dublin)
“Idlenesse the nourse of sin”: The Origin and Order of Sin in the Faerie Queene Bk I


11.50 Short break


12pm Panel 5 – Monarchical misdeeds

Chair – Dr. Stephen O’Neill (NUI Maynooth)

Prof. Stuart Kurland (Duquesne University, U.S.A.)
Loyal Service? Political Transgression at Court and on Stage

Dr. Andrew King (University College Cork)
The “ Monument of Uncertainty”: Literary and Royal Authority in Samuel Sheppard’s The Faerie King (c.1650)


1pm Lunch (not provided)


2pm Panel 6 – Dramatic women

Chair – Dr. Naomi McAreavey (University College Dublin)

Edel Semple (University College Dublin)
“a gentlewoman of my fashion": (Ad)dressing the Whore

Dr. Ayako Kawanami (The University of Hirosaki, Japan)
The Transgressing Whores in Robert Greene’s A Disputation betweene a Hee and Shee Conny-catcher

Dr. Christopher Ivic (Bath Spa University, U.K.)
Recuperating the Amazon: Shakespeare’s Margaret of Anjou


3.20 Plenary 3 – Prof. Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University)
Sex on the Border


4.30 Closing Remarks and Conference End – Edel Semple (University College Dublin)