Performing Objects and the Objects of Performance seeks innovative theories of performance through investigations of early modern historical objects. A wide-ranging conversation bridging scholarly fields and cutting across early modern times and spaces, the symposium will explore performance as a shifting ground for complex new modes of encounter between historical analysis and its objects. These objects may be material objects, the individuals or collectives that create material objects, or the conceptual and abstract objects of knowledge at play in both early modern cultural-intellectual production and contemporary narratives of early modern history. We invite discussants and participants to contemplate how performance, as a theoretical rubric, can illuminate the interaction within and among the various categories of object, as well as between object and subject— both historical subjects and historian-subjects. How do objects represent, enact, or mediate performance? In what ways can one object surrogate or perform as another? How do objects circulate performances across distances of time and space?
The symposium took place in real-time and virtual space over two extended Zoom sessions on June 14, 2021 and June 15, 2021. These sessions were recorded, and the recordings are posted to the Symposium Program page. Click on the highlighted date link to view that day’s conversations.
Papers by invited scholars were pre-circulated by design, and posted to this site for online access. Please note that these papers are Works-in-Progress, and as such none should not be cited, quoted or circulated without the express permission of its author.
Sessions included discussion of the pre-circulated papers and presentations by each author on relevant objects digitized from the collections of the John Hay Library.
The discussions were moderated by Professor Holly Shaffer of Brown’s Department of the History of Art and Architecture.
The Symposium features presentations by (in alphabetical order by surname):
Claire M. L. Bourne (Department of English, Penn State)
Frans-Willem Korsten (Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University)
Matthew Melvin-Koushki (Department of History, University of South Carolina)
Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Department of English, UCL)
A NOTE OF APPRECIATION: The organizers wish to thank Amanda Strauss, Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Director of the John Hay Library, and Andrew Laird, Director of the Center for the Study of the Early Modern World at Brown, for their ongoing support of this project. We also here acknowledge the contributions of Brown University Library staff members Maan Alsahoui, Jennifer Braga, Ann Morgan Dodge, Karen Eberhart, Lindsay Elgin, Kerri Hicks, Andrew Majcher, Lizette Martinez, Shashi Mishra, Robin Ness, Joseph Rhoads, Cody Ross, Laurie Rossi, Holiday Shapiro, and Justin Uhr, and of the Early Modern Studies Academic Center Manager Maria Sokolova, each of whom provided technical and logistical support without which this Symposium would not have been possible.