Centre for European Studies

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

European Studies Colloquium 2012 Programme

Performing Europe / European Performances

Organized by the Centre for European Studies, Dalhousie University

27-28 April 2012, McCain 2021

Day 1

Romantic Masculinity

Chair: Joel Faflak (English, Western University)

  • Roberta Barker (Theatre, Dalhousie), “’One of Those Incomprehensible German Characters’: German Heroes, French Playwrights, and the Performance of Romantic Masculinity”
  • Julia M. Wright (European Studies, Dalhousie), “Performing National Masculinity: Thomas Moore and the Voice of the Bard”

The Problem of History

Chair: Cynthia Neville (History, Dalhousie)

  • Dorota Glowacka (King’s), “The Trace of the Untranslatable: Emmanuel Levinas and the Ethics of Translation after the Shoah”
  • Jerry White (European Studies, Dalhousie), “Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and the Performance of History”

Keynote 

Regina Uí Chollatain (University College Dublin), “From Seanchaí to Screen: The ‘Irishman’ in Irish- Language Drama and Film”

Day 2

Constructing Aristocracy

Chair: Julia M. Wright (European Studies, Dalhousie)

  • Sébastien Rossignol (History, Dalhousie), “The Performance of Ducal Identities in Medieval Silesia – Charters as Media of Communication”
  • Estelle Joubert (Music, Dalhousie), “Performing Politics on the Opera Stage: Maria Antonia’s Self-Stylization as Saxon Princess”
  • Sally Colwell (English, Western University), “’Sexy Tudors’: Back to the Beginning and Baring It All in Showtime’s Racy (un)Costume(d) Drama”

Creating European Subjects

Chair: Judith Thompson (English, Dalhousie)

  • Anthony J. Harding (English, University of Saskatchewan),“The London Magazine: Creating a Metro-cosmo-politan Readership”
  • Joel Faflak (English, Western University), “Performing Crisis: Europe, Romantic Psychiatry, and the Economics of Happiness”

The Spectacle of Modernity

Chair: Jerry White (European Studies, Dalhousie)

  • David McNeil and Ron Huebert (English, Dalhousie), “Spectatorship in the Early Modern Period”
  • Jason Haslam (English, Dalhousie), “R. U. ... ?: Queering Robots in Karel Čapek’s
    R. U. R.    ”

Staging Encounter

Chair: Patricia Cove

Journal Launch and Closing Remarks

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Call for Papers

For the second annual colloquium in European Studies, we invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes which deal with the ways that Europe is or has been performed.  Papers are welcomed from all disciplines and historical periods, from antiquity to the present. Possible topics include:

  • Performances of identity (e.g., national, inter-national, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class)
  • Theatre and other spectacles
  • Cinema, television, new media, etc.
  • The concept of performativity in contemporary European Studies
  • Literary approaches to performance and/or performativity
  • Politics and performance
  • The theatre of the law, the law of the theatre
  • The European Theatre

It goes without saying that these are suggestions, and that we welcome all manner of proposals which engage with Europe and the way it is performed.  We will also be launching a new peer-reviewed e-journal, European Studies: History, Society and Culture, to be published by the Centre for European Studies at Dalhousie. We are hoping to make a selection of the papers from the colloquium a significant part of the first issue of the journal, due out in early 2013.

Please send a 250-word proposal by 16 January 2012 to Julia.Wright@Dal.Ca or Jerry.White@Dal.Ca.