2025 Early Modern Center Conference, “Performing Religion in Early Modern England”
Friday, May 30th and Saturday, May 31st, 2025
This interdisciplinary conference explores how religion was dramatized, contested, and embodied in early modern English literature and performance. Against the backdrop of the English Reformation and global religious exchange, the conference examines how playwrights and poets grappled with shifting theological doctrines, ambiguous spiritual identities, and the political stakes of religious expression on stage and in print. Topics under consideration include:
• Representations of religious practice or the art of religion in early modern literature and culture
• The relationship between religion and narrative
• Authorship and religion
• The politics of religion in early modern England
• Representations of religion as a means of subversion and empowerment
• Religious alliances and/or conflicts in the early modern period
• Approaches to performing religion in early modern England
• Audience reception of religious depictions in theater
• Embodiment and religion in early modern England
• The impact of English religions by “other” early modern religions
• The impact of global religions on early modern England
We will also feature keynotes from Professor Lauren Robertson (Columbia University) and William Robert (Syracuse).
Schedule
Friday, May 30th (McCune Room, HSSB 6020)
(Lunch is available for purchase at many venues in the UCEN, as well as at the Coral Cafe and the Arbor.)
12:00 pm – 12:45 pm Registration/Pastries
12:45 pm – 1:00 pm Opening Remarks
1:00 pm – 2:40 pm Keynote, William Robert (Syracuse University)
Five Minute Break
2:45 pm – 4:15 pm Panel, Sounding the Sacred: Hearing Faith in Early Modern Music, Poetry, and Drama
Mayra Alejandra Cortes, “The Acousmatic Trinity Heard but Unseen in John Milton’s Paradise Lost“
Maria Hanzelková, “Catechesis, Piety, and Subversion: Czech Christological Ballads (1700–1950)”
Samantha Reavis, “Censorship and Patronage in Tudor Sacred Music”
Five Minute Break
4:20 pm – 5:50 pm Panel, Teaching Faith: Religious Education and Audience Reception in Early Modern Literature
Benjy Salt, “Chastity and Pedagogy in The Winter’s Tale“
Hongbin Tan, “Theatrical Art and Iconoclasm in The Winter’s Tale“
Javier Chapa, “Shakespeare and Jesuit Theatrical Memory”
Ten Minute Break
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm Dinner (Mosher Alumni Hall)
Saturday, May 31st (McCune Room, HSSB 6020)
10:00 am – 11:30 am Registration, Pastries
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Panel, Dying to Believe: The Specter of Death in Early Modern Drama
Louise Akers, “Hic et ubique: Indifference and Equivalence in Hamlet, or Learning to Live Without Ghosts”
Nick Moschovakis, “Mortalist Thoughts: Reformation Humanism, Neo-Latin Elegy, Elizabethan Tragedy”
12:30 pm – 1:45 pm Lunch
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm Panel, Beyond Christendom: Representing the Religious “Other” on the Early Modern Stage
Trisha Gupta, “Travel Knowledge as Gustatory: Digesting, Domesticating, and Diluting ‘Foreign’ Religions”
Zied Ben Amor, “William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Islamo-Christian Intellectual Tradition: Rethinking Renaissance”
Sung Yu, “Performing Christianity: Religious Hypocrisy and Identity in The Merchant of Venice and Richard III“
Five Minute Break
3:20 pm – 4:50 pm Second Keynote, Professor Lauren Robertson (Columbia University)
Fifteen Minute Break
4:50 pm – 5:00 pm Closing Remarks
