Utah Shakespeare Festival

Symposium to Tickle Brains, Manuscripts

From handling manuscripts to drawing stick-figure representations of William Shakespeare's plays, this year's Wooden O Symposium hosted by Southern Utah University (SUU) and The Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, August 7–9 will cover a wide range of Shakespearean-related topics.

The Wooden O Symposium is a cross-disciplinary conference exploring Medieval through Early Modern Studies via the text and performance of Shakespeare's plays. Scholars from all disciplines submit papers that offer insights and new ideas springing from the era of William Shakespeare, as his plays are replete with the language, thoughts, and arts of the Renaissance and Western culture and represent an inexhaustible source for creative ideas and research. Scholars attending the conference will have the unique opportunity of immersing themselves in research, text, and performance in one of the most beautiful natural settings in the western United States.

This year's opening address will be delivered by Mya Lixian Gosling at the Movie Theatre, Sharwan Smith Student Center, 5–6 p.m. on Monday, August 7. Gosling is the author and artist of Good Tickle Brain, (goodticklebrain.com) the world's foremost and possibly only stick-figure Shakespeare web-comic. She thinks that Shakespeare is super fun and wants other people to also think that Shakespeare is super fun. In her past life, she worked as a Southeast Asian language cataloger at the University of Michigan Graduate Library.

The keynote address will be given by Heather Wolfe, curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Shakespeare Documented, an online database of images, descriptions, and transcriptions of all known references and allusions to Shakespeare and his works during his lifetime and shortly thereafter. She is also principal investigator for EMMO (Early Modern Manuscripts Online), an Institute of Museum and Library Services–funded initiative to create a free and searchable database of images and transcriptions of early modern manuscripts created in England or written in English. She has curated numerous Folger exhibitions and has written widely on early modern manuscripts and the intersections between print and manuscript. She has edited The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608 (2007), The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary (2007), Letterwriting in Renaissance England (2004), and an exhibition catalog co-written with Alan Stewart and Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters (2001). Her current research interests include early modern filing systems and the social circulation of writing paper. She holds a doctorate in Renaissance Literature from the University of Cambridge and a master's in library science from University of California, Los Angeles. Here keynote address is scheduled for 9–10:15 a.m., Tuesday, August 8, at the Sterling Church Auditorium, Sharwan Smith Student Center.

Another aspect of the program is the Journal of the Wooden O, a peer-reviewed, cross-disciplinary, academic publication focusing on all things Shakespeare. The Journal is published annually by Southern Utah University Press in cooperation with the SUU Center for Shakespeare Studies and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Editors welcome submissions on all aspects of Shakespeare Studies including text, performance, history, design, adaptation (film, fiction, and visual and performing arts), Elizabethan and Jacobean culture and history, and Shakespeare's contemporaries. The journal also includes the top undergraduate paper selected from the symposium. Single copies may be purchased for $15 each. Libraries or individuals may subscribe to the journal for $15/year. Prices include shipping and handling.

Symposium sessions and opening and keynote speakers are open to the public at no charge. Meals and plays require registration and payment of the registration fee.
For more information, visit the Wooden O Symposium page on the Utah Shakespeare Festival website.

August 3, 2017

If you have Shakespearean news to share, e-mail [email protected]