IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1642: Performing Premodern Disability: Disability in Performance, Disability as Performance

Thursday 6 July 2023, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:	Medieval & Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
Organiser:	Mark Campbell Chambers, Department of English Studies, Durham University
Moderator/Chairs:	Frank M. Napolitano, Department of English, Radford University Diana Wyatt, Department of English Studies, Durham University
Paper 1642-a	Disability in Performance in the Records from Medieval Durham: The Case of Master Nicholas of York (Language: English) Mark Campbell Chambers, Department of English Studies, Durham University Index terms: Monasticism, Performance Arts - Drama, Performance Arts - General, Social History
Paper 1642-b	Blindness and Body Waste in Medieval French Farce (Language: English) Marla Carlson, Department of Theatre Studies, City University of New York Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Lay Piety, Performance Arts - Drama, Social History
Paper 1642-c	The Staging of Bodily Deviance in Leading Roles in Spanish Golden Age Comedia (Language: English) Pablo García Piñar, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago, Illinois Index terms: Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese, Performance Arts - Drama, Social History
Abstract	The study of historical disability has received increasing scholarly interest over the last several decades. Scholars working on the medieval and early modern periods have increasingly focused attention on disability as a topic for historical and/or theoretical analysis. Moreover, the historic 'performance' of disability continues to garner scholarly interest, including from those working on the early drama. Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS), this session will present and examine aspects of disability or of impairment in non-Shakespearean premodern drama and/or performance. It features papers on the context for disabled performers appearing in records from medieval Durham, configurations of sensory disability and personal catastrophe in late medieval French farce, and the embodied experience of disability in 17th-century Spain from the privileged perspective of the disabled playwright Juan Ruiz de Alarcón.