IASEMS Tempera Seminar 2027
University of Padova, Department of Language and Literary Studies
7-9 June 2027
The University of Padova is pleased to announce that, on 7-9 June 2027, it will be hosting the next IASEMS Tempera Seminar, with a focus on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. This is one of Shakespeare’s best-known romances, or late plays, which straddles tragedy and comedy along with a conflictual court and serene, reconciliatory pastoral setting. Such division is emphasised by the remarkable location and time changes between the first and second part of the play: changes which also help the concept of human transformation emerge. The play prompts many questions about the human mind, gender, sin, nature, storytelling and lying, and about death and art. It includes one of the most wondrous and confusing scenes in Shakespeare’s whole canon, that of Hermione’s revival from statue form, in which faith and art come together to bring back to life what seemed forever lost, and where the play’s syncretic potential between Christian and pagan elements reaches its peak.
Of significant interest is also Shakespeare’s reshaping of the sources, from Elizabethan prose romance to classical myth and tragedy, and even Italianate novella. The complex stage history of the play, as well as its largely uncharted cultural history, are also important areas of scholarly enquiry.
20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of the play, including, but not limited to:
- the power of imagination, art and artifice
- time, death and revival
- the negotiation of penance and law
- memory, forgetting and forgiveness
- family, kinship and generations
- the representation of affects and humours, also in relation to early modern understandings of disability
- politics of gender and sexuality
- negotiating early modern politics
- the play’s portrayal of religion
- magic and medicine: The Winter’s Tale on the cusp between natural philosophy and early modern science
- the influence of early modern underworld and popular culture
- ecocritical readings of The Winter’s Tale: the role of nature
- English and European sources of the play
- classical and mythological influences
- the use of the pastoral mode in the (tragi)comedy
- Romance, tragicomedy, late play: issues of genre
- Renaissance intertextualities: the intersection of play, performance and visual art
- performance history and performance criticism
- issues related to editing
- The Winter’s Tale on (different) pages and stages: issues of translation and adaptation
Selected papers will be published in a new open-access instalment of the series Shakespeare dal Testo alla Scena (Pacini) inaugurated by Mariangela Tempera.
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2027
Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2027
Keynote Speakers:
- Gregory Doran (RSC Artistic Director, 2012-2022)
- Peter Kirwan (Mary Baldwin University, USA)
- Natália Pikli (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)
Please send a 200-word proposal with a short bio to Alice Equestri (alice.equestri@unipd.it), Alessandra Petrina (alessandra.petrina@unipd.it) and Rocco Coronato (rocco.coronato@unipd.it) before the specified deadline.
Information about the conference will be available on the IASEMS website: www.iasems.org