Call for Papers Tragedy and Resistance, 16-17 April, 2026
Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Berlin (https://lfbrecht.de/)
Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Caroline Levine (Cornell University), author of The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis
- Dr Marco Checchi (Northumbria University), author of The Primacy of Resistance: Power, Opposition and Becoming https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/primacy-of-resistance-9781350124479/
Many contemporary challenges in our divided, unjust, and unequal world – ecocide, authoritarianism, populism, militarism, neo-imperialism, and nationalism – have their roots in the early modern European era. Early modern European drama – especially tragedy – represents and critiques that era, and tells us a lot about how we got here, and where we might go next.
This matters because our contemporary challenges necessitate an active and resistant response. Dominant approaches to literary analysis have often focused on ‘unsettling’ discourses that stimulate critical thinking, but with an open-ended, ‘anti-instrumentalist’ approach, and without necessarily connecting this to substantial social action.
In contrast, this event takes a transdisciplinary, transnational, and transhistorical approach to a specific historical genre – early modern tragedy – to foster an ‘activist humanism’ by offering an experimental space for contemporary social engagement and resistance, and by engaging literary scholars in dialogue with and to the benefit of activists, educators, and theatre makers. Interpreting early modern plays is therefore not an end in itself but a means to stimulate criticality framing and informing action and resistance.
The organizers invite scholars, dramaturges, and activists to submit abstracts for 20-30 minute papers by 30 January 2025 to Adam Hansen ([email protected]), to whom any queries can be directed, on these issues or the questions below:
- What do early modern tragedies say about activism and resistance, and how can activist and resistant readings and practices alter the uses of early modern tragedies, on stage, on the page, and in the classroom?
- How might tragedies of the past inform readings of and resistances to tragic conditions in the present?
- How can we theorize, historicize, share, and perform resistance?
This Workshop is an initiative of the University of Northumbria, Ghent University, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Network on Political Aesthetics (Working Group on Theatre), UGent-VUB Alliance Research Group THALIA (Interplay of Theare, Literature & Media in Performance)
Please check the following website for updates about this CFP: https://aogthalia.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/call-for-papers-tragedy-and-resistance-16-17-april-2026/