Elizabeth Williamson / research profile
Publications
The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama (Ashgate: Burlington, VT, 2009).
Book Review. "Sean Benson, Shakespearean Resurrection." Religion and Literature, forthcoming.
"Things Newly Performed: The Resurrection Tradition in Shakespeare's Plays." Forthcoming in Shakespeare and Religious Change, edited by Kenneth Graham (Palgrave Macmillan).
"The Uses and Abuses of Prayer Book Properties in Hamlet, Richard III, and Arden of Faversham." English Literary Renaissance 39:2 (Spring 2009): 371-95.
"Useful and fancy articles: relics of the nineteenth-century stage." Shakespeare International Yearbook , Vol. 7 (Fall 2007): 233-55.
"The Domestication of Religious Objects in The White Devil." Studies in English Literature 47:2 (Spring 2007): 473-90.
Book Review. "Maurice Hunt, Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness." Baylor Journal of Theater and Performance, Fall 2006.
Papers and lectures
"Hamlet's Skull and the Problem of Anonymity." Guest presenter. Five-College Renaissance Seminar, Amherst, Massachusetts, November 2007.
"Useful and fancy articles: relics of the nineteenth century stage." Panel: The Presence of Shakespeare. Shakespeare Association of America. April 2006.
"Altar Properties and Their Trappings." Panel: Materializing Performance in Early Modern England. Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, California, April 2006.
"Reluctant idols: the language of Protestant rebuke in The Two Gentlemen of Verona." Special Session: Shakespeare and the Reformation. Modern Language Association Conference, Washington D.C., 30 December 2005.
"Things Newly Performed: The Resurrection Tradition in Shakespeare's Plays." Panel: The Medieval Heritage. Seventeenth Waterloo Conference on Religion and Theatre, Waterloo, Ontario, 17 June 2005.
"The Performance of Piety: The Uses and Misuses of Sacred Books on the Early Modern Stage." Panel: Beyond the Printed Page: Rethinking Renaissance Women. Renaissance Society of America, Cambridge, UK, 7 April 2005.
"'A devill in the wall': Acts of Resurrection on the Seventeenth-Century Stage." University of Pennsylvania Medieval-Renaissance Seminar, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 31 March 2004.
"Resurrection and theatrical inheritance." Panel: Theatrical Properties. Shakespeare Association of America, New Orleans, Louisiana, 9 April 2004.
"Crucifixes and Capuchins: Desecrated Rituals in The White Devil." Panel: Contested Objects: Religious Upheaval, Catholic Objects and Body Parts on the Renaissance Stage. Modern Language Association Conference, San Diego, California, 28 December 2003.
"Valuable but Light: The Social Life of Othello's Handkerchief." Panel: Shakespeare, Politics, and Economics. International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 8 May 2003.
"Othello and the Circulation of Trifles". Panel: Commodities and Commodification in Shakespeare. Shakespeare Association of American, Victoria, British Columbia, 11 April 2003.
Panelist. "The Social Life of Things: A Retrospective Roundtable." University of Pennsylvania Ethnohistory Workshop, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 17 October, 2002.
"Embedded in Time: Performance Strategies in The Winter's Tale." Panel: Performing Continuities and Ruptures on the Early Modern Stage. Wrinkles in Time, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 7 October 2000.
Upcoming projects
I am currently co-editing, with Jane Hwang Degenhardt, a volume entitled Religion and Early Modern Drama. This collection focuses on the nature of the theater's engagement with religious experience by promoting new methodologies that go beyond allusions to individual texts and confessional ideologies in the scripts and pay particular attention to the theatrical medium. The collection will feature the work of Julia Reinhart Lupton, Daniel J. Vitkus, Paul Whitfield White, Michael O'Connell, Susannah Monta, Maurice Hunt, John Cox, Erika Lin, Joseph Black, Dennis Britton, Peter Berek, Jacqueline Wylde, Holly Pickett, and Musa Gurnis.
I am also working on a project on Shakespearean stage relics whose provisional title is "Theatrical Lineage." These relics include stage props and costumes from particular performance runs and items associated with famous actors such as Ellen Terry and Edmund Booth. This project extends material included in the final section of the book project and is based on an examination of objects in the Furness collection at the University of Pennsylvania and in the Folger Library collection in Washington D.C.