Revels Office: New Voices in Early Modern Material Culture, Theatre, and Performance

“Make you to ravel all this matter out” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.4)

Within early modern studies, there has been a growing interest in the intersections between text, materiality, and performance, both in and beyond the commercial theatres. The Revels Office, an international research group comprised of early career academics, has always been fascinated by the relationship between textual, visual and material cultures and the material realities of theatre and performance.

The Revels Office will hold its first conference with the Society of Antiquaries of London on 13 June 2025. The conference invites contributions from emerging scholars working on early modern culture, materiality, and theatre, focusing on the long early modern period in Great Britain and Ireland (1500-1800). We are keen to hear from early career academics working in these areas. Within this, our disciplinary spread is broad, and we invite contributions from early modern scholars working on subjects ranging across but not limited to archaeology, art, history, literature, music, theatre, and performance. The conference will take place at Burlington House and will be live-streamed for online audiences.

Our keynote speaker will be Professor Catherine Richardson FSA (University of East Anglia).

Topics for 20-minute papers may include, but are not limited to:

  • Rhetorical, technological, and material manifestations of objects in culture and performance
  • The sensory, intercorporeal and embodied dynamics of performance
  • Props, costumes, textiles, and the materiality of performance
  • Material culture and gender and/or sexuality
  • Material culture and race-making
  • Material culture and social, devotional and economic identities
  • Performance and ephemerality
  • Recreation as scholarly practice

The deadline for abstracts is March 24, 2025.

Please email a paper title and abstract of c.200 words, along with a short bio, to [email protected].

More information on the Revels Office can be found on our website.