Archive for June 22nd, 2012
Kevin Curran: “Killer Shakespeare”
What: Kevin Curran:”Killer Shakespeare”
When: November 1, Thursday, 7 pm
Where: RSVP, 214-838-3554
Admission: FREE to Members, $10 Non-Members
On television and in video games, we seem to approach murder recreationally. At the same time, it’s a topic of first-order ethical importance for us and connects to our most fundamental beliefs about the value and nature of life.
Killing, in Shakespeare, helps us map out interesting aspects of Shakespeare’s world (both intellectual and theatrical), and also offers us compelling ways to explore our own. At what point and under what conditions does the taking of life becomes “murder”? Where do we draw the line between murder, revenge, political assassination, and the
events of war?
A few key scenes will be posted online and available at the Salon.
Dr. Curran specializes in Renaissance literature and theater with particular interests in Shakespeare, law, philosophy and critical theory, performance, and the culture of the court. His first book, “Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court” (Ashgate, 2009), looks at how political, religious, and sexual understandings of “union” came to bear on the formation of a uniquely Jacobean political imagination. Curran is also preparing an edition of Samuel Daniel’s play, “The Tragedy of Philotas”, which will be published by Manchester University Press as part of the “Revels Plays” series. He is currently working on a new book called “Law and Selfhood in Shakespeare”, and he recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Criticism on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology”. Curran has received grants and fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Harry Ransom Research Center, among others. He is the editor of a new book series called “Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance,” published by Edinburgh University Press. At UNT, he is founder and convener of the Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium. In 2012, Dr. Curran won the Kesterson Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching and the Professor of the Year Award from the Graduate Students of English Association.
