Call for Papers: The Actress as Author: Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry
Chawton House Library, 9-10 July, 2015.
The stage offered women an unprecedented freedom to speak out. It was a place where women were listened to, where they were respected, and where they had the potential to out-earn their male colleagues. This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore all of the ways in which actresses were invested with authority, as authors of print and/or performance texts; of popular characters; of trends or fashions; of their own celebrity personae.
We invite proposals for individual papers, panels, performances or provocations on any element of ‘the actress as author,’
Potential topics might include, but are not limited to:
- Actresses as playwrights, poets, journalists, critics, and/or novelists
- Actresses and autobiography and memoir
- The actress and the one-woman show
- Actresses as authors of their careers
- Actresses as theatrical managers
- Actresses and public addresses, speeches, and/or correspondence
- Actresses and private theatricals
- Actresses as authorizers of trends (fashionable, political, literary)
Please send a 250-300 word abstract to: Elaine McGirr (elaine.mcgirr@rhul.ac.uk) and Laura Engel (engell784@duq.edu) by 19 December, 2014.