CFP: The Melodramatic Moment, 1790-1820, King's College London, Mar 2014

CFP: The Melodramatic Moment, 1790-1820

Deadline: Friday 15 November 2013
27-29 March 2014, King’s College London

Supported by King’s College London, the European Research Council, University of Warwick and the AHRC.

In the last two decades, melodrama and the melodramatic have been brought to mainstream scholarly attention in an effort to revisit long-standing assumptions about a much-maligned cultural form. Yet the relationship between the melodramatic technique (spoken word over or alternated with instrumental music), melodramatic aesthetic (strong contrast between good and evil, extremes of emotion), and the melodramatic genre (combining the two) has remained both historically and conceptually mysterious. In this conference, we aim to address these relationships by focussing on the period in which melodrama as a stage genre came to prominence, a period in which several of the key European traditions overlap and coincide.

We invite proposals for papers that engage with this melodramatic moment from all disciplinary perspectives. Particular points of focus include:

-the relationship between high-art and low-art variants of melodrama
-the relationship between melodrama as genre and melodrama as aesthetic
-musical and other adaptations of exported melodramas to new surroundings
-the relationship between music and stage action (gesture, scenery, lighting)
-melodrama’s relationship to broader social and historical conditions
-the relationship between melodrama and romanticism, classicism, and the gothic
-issues of gender and identity in melodramatic performance

As it is envisaged that selected conference papers will be developed into an edited essay collection, we are asking for an abstract of 500-700 words, to be emailed to melodramaticmoment at gmail.com by Friday 15 November 2013. We aim to review applications as quickly as is reasonable and will notify applicants of our decisions by mid-December at the latest. Those invited to contribute to the symposium will be expected to send a 3000-5000 word draft of their paper for circulation to other delegates prior to the meeting.  The meeting itself will include a performance workshop of representative repertoire. The conference language is English.

Katherine Hambridge (Warwick) and Jonathan Hicks (KCL)