CFP: STAGING SILENCE FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE RENAISSANCE, deadline 9/1/25

3–4 July 2025 / St John’s College, Cambridge

This two-day, in-person conference will explore developing traditions of silence in dramatic texts from antiquity to the Renaissance.

Papers are sought from scholars across a range of fields, including classical reception, comparative literature, and medieval and/or early modern English literature.

Topics may include: – mute characters and/or characters who never appear on stage; – characters who gain or lose the power of speech (welcoming perspectives e.g. from disability studies); – dramatic silence as represented on page and/or stage (e.g. book history approaches and/or performance studies); – the history and/or function of animals on stage; – the relationship of dramatic silence to music and/or inarticulacy; – representations of dramatic silence in contemporary discursive texts;-dumb shows; – silence in neo-Latin drama.

Speakers will include Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham), and Julie Stone Peters (Columbia).

Please submit a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute paper to John Colley (stagingsilence@gmail.com) by noon on Thursday 9 January 2025. Preference will be given to papers with an interdisciplinary and/or comparative focus. It’s anticipated that early career speakers will be able to apply for travel bursaries.