[ecrea] Reconsidering Popular Comedy

Reconsidering Popular Comedy, Ancient and Modern
Wednesday 28–Friday 30 August
Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre, University of Glasgow

The comic theatre of Greece and Rome, like that of many other crucial 
periods
of comic history (e.g. Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; music hall; 
vaudeville)
is often described as popular comedy. This conference aims to 
investigate the
extent, limits and utility of considering comic drama to be "popular". 
How far
does performance in front of a mass audience shape the form and language of
comedy? How genuinely "popular" are different comic traditions? To what 
extent
and in what ways do "elite" and "popular" interact in the original and
subsequent contexts of reception? Is "popular comedy" a useful term or 
is it
subsuming other more challenging concepts (such as, for example, class)? 
And
to what extent can parallel themes in the production and reception of 
popular
comedy be seen across cultures and media?

The conference begins with the comic traditions of Greece and Rome, but
broadens out the question to consider popular comedy in other periods, 
modes
and languages.

Speakers include: Peter Brown (Trinity, Oxford), Peter Kruschwitz 
(Reading),
Amy Richlin (UCLA), James Robson (Open), Ralph Rosen (Penn), Alan 
Sommerstein
(Nottingham), Peter Wiseman (Exeter). A full timetable is given below.

For the full conference website, including registration forms, go to:

http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/classicsresearch/popularcomedyconference/

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the organisers:
Costas Panayotakis ((costas.panayotakis /at/ glasgow.ac.uk)) and Ian Ruffell
((ian.ruffell /at/ glasgow.ac.uk)).

Thanks,

Ian

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Provisional programme
Wednesday 28 August 2013
9-10 Registration
10.00-10.10 Welcome

10.10-10.50 Session 1 - Introducing Popular Comedy:
Ralph Rosen (Penn), Aesthetics, taste and the question of 'popular' 
comedy in
Classical Athens

10.50-11.20 COFFEE

11.20-12.40 Session 2 - Aristophanes:
11,20-12.00 James Robson (Open University), Humouring the masses: the highs
and lows of Aristophanic comedy
12.00-12.40 Sarah Miles (Durham University), Paratragedy and popular comic
drama

12.40-14.00 LUNCH

14.00-15.20 Parallel sessions:
Session 3 - Menander:
14.00-14.40 Giorgios Kazantzidis (Oxford), Doctors in a comic costume: 
medical
language and mass audience in the comedy of Menander
14.40-15.20 Valeria Cinaglia (KCL), ‘Menander and popular ethics’
15.20-16.00 Stavroula Kiritsi (RHUL), “Menander’s new adventure”: an
adaptation of Dyskolos for the modern Greek audience

Session 4 - Comic Drama and Beyond:
14.00-14.40 Andrea Capra (Milan), A star performer and his people: the 
staging
of Assemblywomen
14.40-15.20 Viviane Klein (Boston), Animaniacs and Ancient Greek Satyr 
Drama

15.20-16.00 Steve Kidd (Brown), Is “elite comedy” a paradox? The case for
sympotic comedy

16.00-16.30 TEA

16.30-17.30 Key note address: Alan Sommerstein (Nottingham), How 
“popular” was
Athenian comedy?

18.30-20.00 Reception: 65 Oakfield Avenue


Thursday 29 August 2013
9:30-10.50 Parallel sessions:

Sesssion 5 - Later Greek Humour:
9.30-10.10 Inger Kuin (NYU), Audience and performance in Lucian’s comic
dialogues
10.10-10.50 Anna Foka (Umea), Popular impact equals popular comedy? The 
case
of Byzantine mimes

Session 6 - Film & TV:
9.30-10.10 Lee Broughton (Leeds), Popular comedy in a popular film form:
surveying and reassessing critical responses to comedic European Westerns
10.10-10.50 Kai Schwind (Lillehammer/Oslo), “A chilled out entertainer” –
Ricky Gervais in The Office, comedic performance versus the real

10.50-11.20 COFFEE

Session 7 - Roman Mime and Beyond:
11.20-12.00 Andrea Argius (Rome), Late-Republican mime: a source for 
“public
opinion”
12.00-12.40 Ian Goh (Manchester), Eclogues and Satires as a joint 
response to
popular comedy during the Triumvirate

12.40-14.00 LUNCH

Session 8 - Roman Comedy:
14.00-14.40 Peter Kruschwitz (Reading), Populi sensus maxime theatro et
spectaculis perspectus est
14.40-15.20 Amy Richlin (UCLA), Human trafficking and the memory of 
freedom in
Plautine comedy
15.20-16.00 Peter Brown (Trinity, Oxford), The audiences of Plautus and
Terence

16.00-16.30 TEA

16.30-17.30 Key note address: Peter Wiseman (Exeter), Liberior iocus: 
erotic
performance in the Roman world

19.30 Conference dinner at a local restaurant

Friday 30 August 2013
Session 9 - Early Modern:
09.30–10.10 Kate de Rycker (Kent), The reception of Aretino’s comedies in
Early Modern England
10.10-10.50 Martina Pranic, Highs and lows of Dundo Maroje: 
reconsidering the
popularity of the most popular Ragusan comedy

10.50-11.20 COFFEE

Session 10 - Greek Comedy and Popular Modern Reception:
11.20-12.00 Olga Smiechowicz (Jagiellonian University, Krakow), 
Aristophanes
for Polish culture between 1890 and 1918
12.00-12.40 Angeliki Varakis-Martin (Kent), Positive emotion, popular
celebration and cognition in the modern staging of Aristophanic comedy

12.40-14.00 LUNCH

Session 11 - Cross-media perspectives:
14.00-14.40 Ian Wilkie (Institute of Education, London), Vaudeville 
comedy and
twentieth-century art
14.40-15.20 Marcel Lysgaard Lech (University of Southern Denmark), To be 
and
not to be: reflections on the comic character

15.20-15.50 TEA

15.50-16.20 Concluding remarks and discussion: Costas Panayotakis and Ian
Ruffell

--
Dr Ian A Ruffell
Classics, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow G12 8QQ
+44 (0)141 330 5379
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/ianruffell


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