Key Words

Core Program 2016–17
Entertaining the Idea: Shakespeare, Philosophy, Performance

Conference 1: Key Words

—a conference organized by Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine; Lowell Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles; and James Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara

co-sponsored by
UCLA Office of Interdisciplinary & Cross Campus Affairs
UCLA Department of English
UCI Shakespeare Center

To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:
What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now and think I hear all this?
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,
I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy.
—from The Comedy of Errors

To entertain is to delight and amuse but also to receive guests and hence to court risk, from the real dangers of rape, murder, or jealousy to the more intangible exhilaration of self-disclosure and captivation in response to another. To entertain an idea is to welcome a compelling thought or beckoning fiction into the disinhibited zone of speculative play. “I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy,” says Antipholus of Syracuse as he abandons himself to the comedy of errors. Like Antipholus, readers of fictions and viewers of plays entertain “themes” and “dreams” on their way to recognition and new knowledge as a mode of testing the significance and reach of the thought-things and person-problems, encountered in a world co-created by their imaginative participation.

Entertaining the Idea: Shakespeare, Philosophy, Performance will stage a series of encounters between performance and philosophy in Shakespearean drama, encounters designed both to illumine the plays in their poetic and theatrical amplitude and to explore what philosophy and performance might offer each other in 21st-century literary studies. The aim is to take up drama’s capacity to enhance experience, extend attention, exercise judgment, test existential limits, and assert common bonds. Key words in this enterprise include entertainment, acting, acknowledgement, hospitality, and ways of life, concepts explored in the opening conference.

Images
William Blake, 1757–1827
Juliet Asleep (illustration to Shakespeare) & Cordelia and the Sleeping Lear (illustration to Shakespeare)
Pen and watercolor on paper, ca. 1780
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Speakers
Sarah Beckwith, Duke University
Lowell Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles
Sheiba Kian Kaufman, Ahmanson-Getty Fellow
James Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jeffrey Knapp, University of California, Berkeley
James Kuzner, Brown University
Bruce Smith, University of Southern California
Phil Thompson, University of California, Irvine
Tzachi Zamir, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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Program
Friday, October 7, 2016

9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration

10:00 a.m.
Mary Terrall, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome

Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine
Introductory Remarks

10:15 a.m.

Key Words I
Moderator: Matthew J. Smith, Azusa Pacific University

Jeffrey Knapp, University of California, Berkeley
“Entertainment”

Sarah Beckwith, Duke University
“Late Have I Loved You”

Tzachi Zamir, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
“Acting”

Discussion

12:30 p.m.
Lunch

1:30 p.m.

Key Words II
Moderator: J. K. Barret, The University of Texas at Austin

James Kuzner, Brown University
“Shakespeare as a Way of Life”

James Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Hospitality”

Sheiba Kian Kaufman, Ahmanson-Getty Fellow
“Acting in a Hospitable Temporality: Paradigms of Capacity-Building and Transformation”

Discussion

3:45 p.m.
Coffee Break

4:00 p.m.

Roundtable: “Philosophy and/or/as Entertainment in The Winter’s Tale”
Moderator: Julia Lupton, University of California, Irvine

Lowell Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles
Bruce Smith, University of Southern California

5:00 p.m.
Reception

Saturday, October 8, 2016

9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration

10:00 a.m.

Key Words: A Roundtable
Moderator: James Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara

Ahmanson-Getty Fellows and graduate students from UC campuses will share their research plans and projects in response to the key words explored in the opening conference.

Katie Adkison, University of California, Santa Barbara
Philip Ajian, University of California, Irvine
Danilo Caputo, University of California, Irvine
Peter Cibula, University of California, Irvine
Tommy Cosgrove, University of California, Irvine
James Funk, University of California, Irvine
Laura Hatch, University of California, Irvine
Ariane Helou, Ahmanson-Getty Fellow
Sheiba Kian Kaufman, Ahmanson-Getty Fellow
Kristy McCants, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jason Morphew, University of California, Los Angeles
Alexandra Verini, University of California, Los Angeles

11:15 a.m.
Coffee Break

11:30 a.m.

Speaking Shakespeare: A Workshop
Phil Thompson, University of California, Irvine

Phil Thompson—Head of Acting, University of California, Irvine, and Voice and Dialect Coach for the Utah Shakespeare Festival—will lead participants through a series of explorations of Shakespeare’s language using meter, breath, and rhetoric as guides to disclosing meaning.

1:00 p.m.
Program concludes