22 July
Polo Zanotto – Rooms T.2 and T.3 (9:30 – 10:40 am)

L.01
Expending Spirit: Energy and Waste
Dympna Callaghan, Todd Andrew Borlik, Sophie Chiari,  Chloe Preedy, Karen Raber, Charlotte Scott

This plenary roundtable addresses ecologically dynamic relationship between energy and waste suggested, for example, by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 : “Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” There, spirit or energia is spent without any hope of a (re)productive outcome, while in the wake of this morally bankrupt expenditure of energy, shame paradoxically constitutes the “waste” product of this activity, the discernable trace of what has been squandered. Waste sometimes bespeaks moral recklessness, but it can also register a system of value, whereby what is despised and discarded may fuel new poetic and material energies.
At the intersection of Shakespeare studies and climate criticism, we explore multiple ideas of “waste” from the toxic emotional consequences of coitus to the environmental waste and degradation, the fog and filth, of willfully ravaged landscapes to the aporia and void of “the dead waste and middle of the night” (Hamlet) – all of which are key dimensions of the Shakespearean ecosystem.

24 July
Polo Zanotto – Rooms T.2 and T.3 (9:30 – 10:40 am)

L.02
From Fair Verona to the Great Globe Itself:
Romeo and Juliet and the Reformation of Cultural Traditions
Mark Bayer, Carla Della Gatta,  Taarini Mookherjee, Jyotsna G. Singh, Mark Thornton Burnett, Yukari Yoshihara  

At the end of the play, the Prince holds out some meagre hope that the death of the young lovers might prove an impetus to repair Verona’s social institutions—the same ossified traditions and grudges that led to the tragedy. The widely diverse productions canvassed in this roundtable are perhaps more auspicious about the play’s ability to foment amelioratory cultural change. Our papers suggest that adaptations of what is likely Shakespeare’s most familiar play in very distinct regions have served a recuperative function throughout the world, that there is something about the story of this localized ancient grudge that resonates with global audiences and serves as a catalyst to develop, reimagine, or reform cultural traditions and institutions, whether theatrical, cinematic, national, or social.

Many of the adaptations addressed in this panel retell the story through the innovative interplay of image, music, and text. How do these forms of representation converse and cross-fertilize? How can we ethically register site-specific adaptations that traverse digital, multimedia, and acoustic categories? What is the effect of such generic crossings, and how do they bear witness to the leverage of Shakespearean adaptation across time and space? In addressing these issues, we demonstrate the valences of a work which, in its myriad iterations, has consistently shown itself hospitable to speaking to social responsibility, the institutional faces of sexuality, identity formation, civic behaviors, commercial enterprise, confessional differences, and intra-ethnic conflicts.

Our papers suggest that there is indeed something prescient about the story of Verona’s tragic lovers, capable of producing tangible reform not within the world of the play, but in real-world environments, but only after it is transplanted and transformed into vastly different indigenous settings. This roundtable, therefore, is not just about some compelling adaptions of Romeo and Juliet, but more importantly about what these adaptations have wrought: whether a durable set of commercial theatrical institutions in Cairo; consternation over nationally-driven technology in Japan; alteration in the heavy classical theatre training of actors in Puerto Rico and Cuba; a conduit for social commentary in Indian films; or imagining new possibilities for female same-sex desire in the Philippine cinema.

Theorizing adaptation practices, problematizing Shakespeare’s hegemony in non-white cultures, and attending to the nuances of translation in foreign Shakespeares are all conversations that have contributed greatly to our field. This roundtable wishes to shift the focus away from what it means to adapt Shakespeare to advance a conversation on what adaptation of Shakespeare means for planetary cultural traditions, especially as these institutions develop and take on a life of their own, their Shakespearean progeny gradually falling away.

By placing these discrete locations in conversation, we seek to interrogate how a play that is premised on division has served as a stimulus for reform—and perhaps, healing—within each culture. Limiting the scope to Romeo and Juliet, a singular play with a rich production history, facilitates a methodology that enables a tighter focus not usually available in broader studies of

Shakespearean adaptation, and one that aligns with sociological and anthropological practices of cultural comparison.

26 July
Polo Zanotto – Rooms T.2 and T.3 (9:30 – 10:40 am)

L.03
Thinking through Shakespeare:
Rethinking Shakespeare’s (Re)sources
Silvia Bigliazzi, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Tania Demetriou, Hannibal Hamlin, Rob Henke, Atsuhiko Hirota, Jason Lawrence, Sonia Massai, Peter G. Platt, Janice Valls-Russell

Shakespeare’s Sources: Texts, Ideas, Horizons is a large-scale, collaborative research project that reimagines how we understand Shakespeare’s engagement with the textual and cultural worlds of early modern Europe. Moving beyond traditional models of source study that privilege linear influence or direct textual borrowing, the project investigates the wide and often unpredictable circulation of stories, ideas, genres, and discourses that shaped Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It approaches “sources” not as fixed points of origin but as part of a dynamic field of cultural memory, mediation, and reception.

At the heart of the project is a fifteen-volume book series, each volume devoted to a specific literary, intellectual, or cultural domain—from classical drama, epic, and historiography to law, religion, philosophy, geography, and the arts. Across the series, carefully selected texts are presented in accessible modern English and framed by detailed introductions, annotations, and newly commissioned critical essays by leading international scholars. Rather than isolating texts as Shakespeare’s direct precursors, the volumes reconstruct the broader horizons of expectation within which Shakespeare read, wrote, and transformed inherited materials.

Complementing the print series is an integrated digital platform that extends the project’s reach and flexibility. This online resource offers expanded textual archives, cross-searchable metadata, and tools for comparative and interdisciplinary research, allowing the project to remain open, evolving, and responsive to new scholarship. Together, the project’s print and digital components invite readers to encounter Shakespeare as a cultural participant embedded in a richly interconnected textual ecosystem—one defined not by singular origins, but by circulation, adaptation, and creative exchange.