The 2024 Curran Symposium, „Performing Politics“ will honor the bicentennial of Lord Byron's death by engaging with some of the most pressing public issues in the lives of Byron and his contemporaries that carry through to our own turbulent lives in 2024. We take this moment to examine how such conflicts rage on „dubiously and fiercely“ and to consider how art reacts to and reimagines such acts of theatrics and turmoil (Sardanapalus, Act III.i.198).

This symposium will be a full day of panels and discussions, taking place on October 25th, 2024 at NYU’s Palladium Hall in New York City. The symposium festivities will also include a special production of Byron's Sardanapalus at The Red Bull Theater (NYC) on Thursday, October 24th.

Staging Byron's closet drama enables us to think about the difference between intentions for privacy, audience, and writing narratives of legacy. How might acts or performances (broadly conceived) help us imagine a new time and place? What are our stories of political transformation? And what does the act of going public, of sharing these stories, activate for us as citizens, scholars, and artists, those „unacknowledged legislators of the World“ as Shelley famously put it? On the 25th, the symposium will feature invited speakers addressing a diverse range of performances and politics in the work of Byron and his Romantic contemporaries. Before the evening’s drinks and appetizer reception, we will also feature a digital presentation of the artwork from the special creative project we have designed: „Uncloseting Byron“—a public art project that takes a creative, experimental approach to closet drama by using Byron as its starting point. Beginning with a line from one of Byron’s plays, participants create short mixed-media closet dramas and share them via social media. As we not only get off the stage but also off the page for this project, we tarry with how this act of performance might become a space of freedom. 

Schedule

Thursday 24th 2024

7:30 pm         Sardanapalus at The Red Bull Theatre — Sheen Center

                       Post-show Talk-back to follow

Friday 25th 2024, NYU’s Palladium Hall

8:45am – 9:15am           Good Morning Coffee & Tea

9:15 am – 10:00 am

Post-Sardanapalus Production Roundtable

Chair: Omar F. Miranda (University of San Francisco)

Panelists: 

James Armstrong (City College)

Michael Gamer (University of Pennsylvania)

10:00am – 10:15am          Coffee & Tea Break

10:15am – 11:30am     

Panel One: Poetics and Biopolitics, War, Incarceration

Chair: Arden Hegele (Columbia University)

Panelists: 

John Havard (Binghamton University)

Michael Demson (Sam Houston State University)

Mariam Wassif  (Carnegie Mellon University)

11:30am – 11:40am Coffee & Tea Break

11:40am – 12:30pm 

Discussion: Byron and Gender Revisited

Panelists:

Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Kate Singer (Mount Holyoke College)

12:30pm – 2:00pm  Lunch Break

2:00pm – 3:15pm         

Panel Two: Politics of Performing the Future

Chair: Amal Bou Sleiman (International Association of Byron  Societies)

Panelists: 

Emily Rohrbach (Durham University)

David Sigler (University of Calgary)

Marc Gotthardt (University of Cambridge) 

3:15pm – 3:30pm Break

3:30pm – 4:45pm    

Our Everlasting Flame: Engaging with Romanticism's Enduring Foundations (Roundtable)

Chair: Tom Mole (Durham University, UK)

Participants: 

Elizabeth Denlinger (New York Public Library)

Marsha Manns (Byron Society of America)

Alice Levine (Hofstra University)

Andrew Stauffer (University of Virginia)

Jonathan Sachs (Concordia University)

4:45pm – 5:45pm    

Keynote Address: „Performing Politics on our Tight Little Island“

Chair: Alice Levine (Hofstra University)

Jerome McGann (University of Virginia)

5:45pm – 6:15pm    

Closing Remarks, Kate Singer (President, K-SAA; Mount Holyoke College)

Closet Drama & Commonplacing Showcase,
Kaila Rose (Byron Society of America) and Olivia Moy (Lehman College, CUNY)

6:30pm – 8:30pm    

Reception at The Penny Farthing,
103 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

Celebrate Bacchanalia by joining us for drinks & appetizers!