Workshops: Pedagogy

Workshop 35: Women and Performance

Conveners:

• Joyce Mac Donald
• Tina Chancey
• Lori Newcomb

This workshop focused on new research on women and performance in the early modern period--not only as musicians, composers, actresses, playwrights, and other kinds of workers in the arts, but also on questions about the nature of the broader relationship between gender and the performative. Inquiry into such topics as theories of female spectatorship, age, performance and class, racial performance, and performance and sexuality on and off the stage can help scholars and students contextualize and theorize developing knowledge about the status and activities of women as early modern performers. We envisioned a workshop which works toward synthesizing some of the new work on women on the stage with re-imaginations of the place of gender in this theatricalization.