EN LIGNE - “Strange Habits” / Strange Habitats : Clothes, climes, and the environment in Shakespeare and his contemporaries

Taking a cue from the current growth of ecocriticism and of material approaches in Renaissance studies, this conference seeks to cross and confront those two critical trends by looking at one same object — clothing.

Clothing can be explored from a variety of perspectives and calls for cross-disciplinary dialogue between social history, art history, dramatic history, fashion history, literature, sociology, and anthropology. Because clothes protect the human body and serve as an interface between the body and the environment, they can be considered as the most immediate locus for the establishment of any sort of ecology. They come to materialize and epitomize identity in its various inflections. Conversely, they participate in shaping the environments for whose diversity they stand metonymically.

This conference inquires into the complex ecology, economy and anthropology of dress, drawing notably on the material history dress. It also includes papers with more literary approaches that look at the ways in which dress on stage becomes a means to negotiate the self or same in relation to the other, or embodies contemporary understandings of climes and the environment.

Programme et informations complémentaires

Confirmed speakers :
Patricia Lennox (The Gallatin School, New York University)
Ulinka Rublak (University of Cambridge)
Maria Hayward (University of Southampton)
Dympna Callaghan (Syracuse University)
Sophie Jane Pitman (Aalto University)