A Commemoration of the 400^th Anniversary of Their Deaths and a Comparative Study of Their Enduring Influence

Locations: UB Center for the Arts and the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Central Branch (Lafayette Square)

2016 marks the 400^th anniversary of the deaths of both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the pre-eminent authors of poetic drama and of narrative in the Western tradition and the subjects, this year, of worldwide celebration.

This Conference considers central “Objects”—the surviving texts of Shakespeare and Cervantes—and their “Adaptation”: their enduring reputation and influence in scholarship, performance, education, popular culture, politics and policy, and the imagination.

“Object and Adaptation: The Worlds of Shakespeare and Cervantes” will feature talks, commentaries, performances, and a concluding roundtable that explore the influence and adaptation of the works of Shakespeare and Cervantes not just in drama and narratology but also in religious and political aesthetics, animal studies and ecocriticism, humoralism and affect theory, and globalisms, and experimental poetry.

In the US the backbone of the 400^th-anniversary celebrations is the nationwide tour of 18 of the known 233 Shakespeare First Folios—the first collected edition of his plays that was published in 1623 and thus saved them for history—mounted by the Folger Shakespeare Library (http://www.folger.edu/first-folio-tour). But Buffalo did not have to bid for a place on the Folger travelling tour, since we own two copies of the First Folio, one at the downtown Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, and the other at UB Special Collections.

On October 4^th at the Buffalo &Erie County Public Library they will be united for the first time ever as part of a wide-ranging exhibit and celebrated there on Thursday, October 13^th from 5-7 pm in a free “Shakespeare Jubilee,” which will double as the reception for this conference.

For detailed schedule information click here.

Visit https://objectandadaptation.wordpress.com/ for registration information and more!

Sponsored by: UB Humanities Institute, UB Dean of Undergraduate Education, UB Department of English, UB Department of History, UB Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, UB Libraries, UB Early Modern Research Workshop, UB Performance Research Workshop, UB Academies, UB Honors College, UB Gender Institute, UB 2020 Strategic Strength in Cultures & Texts, The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, SUNY Buffalo State