Below is further information about the keynote speakers for the 6th Biennial Conference.
Professor Lena Cowen Orlin
Paper will be entitled 'The Widow's Chamber'
Professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington, Lena's work focuses on the material culture of private life in Shakespeare's time. She is the author of Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford, 2009) and Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Cornell, 1994). In 1996 Lena became Executive Director of the Shakespeare Association of America, a professional organisation with about 2,000 members, and she continues in this position.
Dr Simon Thurley
Paper will be entitled 'Godly Ceremonies: Architecture and Liturgy in English Royal Palaces'
A leading architectural historian, a regular broadcaster, and the Chief Executive of English Heritage, Simon's work focuses on England's historic royal palaces. His major publications include The Building of England (William Collins, 2013), Hampton Court Palace: A Social and Architectural History (Yale, 2004), and The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: A Social and Architectural History (Yale, 1993).
Professor Wendy Heller
Paper will be entitled 'Sylvan Song: The Locus Amoenus in Seicento Opera'
Professor of Music at Princeton University and Director of Princeton's Program in Italian Studies, Wendy studies 17th- and 18th-century opera from interdisciplinary perspectives, with particular emphasis on gender and sexuality, art history, and the classical tradition. Specialising in the music of Monteverdi, Handel, Cavalli, and the interpretation of Venetian opera, Wendy has published numerous articles as well as a book, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women's Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (University of California Press, 2003).
Professor Greg Walker
Paper will be entitled 'A Satire of the Three Estates: Renaissance Scotland's Best Kept Secret'
Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, having previously been the Masson Professor of English at Edinburgh, Greg has written widely on late-medieval drama and poetry, Renaissance literature, the history of the stage in the period before the building of the professional playhouses and the cultural consequences of the Henrician Reformation. He is currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded 'Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court' project which staged productions of Sir David Lyndays's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis in Scotland's historic palaces in June 2013.
