Join us at Yale University on October 13-14 for an interdisciplinary conference to launch the field of Early European Puppetry Studies. Scholars from across North America and Europe will explore a wide range of performing objects to locate fruitful avenues for using puppetry as a framework to analyze art, literature, culture, and performance traditions in late medieval and early modern Europe.

Schedule of events:

Friday, October 13
All sessions will be held in Room 276, Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York St.

9:00-9:30: Conference opening remarks + coffee/tea and light breakfast
Michelle Oing (Stanford) & Nicole Sheriko (Yale)

9:30-10:30: Puppetry and Children
- Scott Trudell (University of Maryland), “Artificial Life in English Civic Pageantry”
- Isabel Dollar (St Andrews), “Bypassing the Interpreter: Child Actors, Ben Jonson’s Epicene, and the Power of Puppets”

10:30-11:30: Puppetry and Dolls
- Markus Rath (Universität Trier), “On the gender of the jointed doll”
- Michelle Moseley (Virginia Tech), “‘Beautiful and Extraordinary!’: Intersections of Puppetry, Performing Objects, and the Early Modern Dutch Dollhouse as Staged Spectacle”

11:30-12:30: Articulated Christ Sculptures as Puppetry
- Una D’Elia (Queen’s University), “The Dead Weight of Christ and the Mechanics of Performance”
- Ariela Algaze (Johns Hopkins), “Vernacular Puppetry and the Crucifix-as-Actor in Italian Confraternal Drama”

12:30-1:3opm: Lunch break (catered lunch for speakers)

1:30-3:00: Puppet Bodies and Materiality
- Manuel Schaub (Universität Konstanz), “Hidden in Plain Sight. The Cleverly Concealed Puppeteer in Wolfgang von Kempelen’s Chess Automaton”
- Jodie Coates (Cambridge), “Moveables of the Middle Ages as Paper-Engineered Puppetry”
- Laura Weigert (Rutgers), “Wax, Skin, and Paint: Vibrant Bodies in Fifteenth-Century Performance”

3:00-3:30: Coffee break

3:30-5:30: Puppet Death and Violence
- Beth Clancy (Durham University), “‘Better play| then playe either at ches or tables’: Chess, Death and Puppetry in the Book of the Duchess”
- Ayesha Verma (Columbia), “‘Dressed in Tiers to Bear a Part’: The Manipulation of Female Corpses in Early Modern English Tragedy”
- Alexa Sand (Utah State), “Dismembered Memories: Puppets, Bodies, Laughter, and Violence in the Late Middle Ages”

7:00: Sponsored speaker dinner at Heirloom, 1157 Chapel Street.

Saturday, October 14
All sessions will be held in Room 276, Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York St.

9:00-9:30: Coffee/tea and light breakfast

9:30-10:30: Records and Reconstructing Puppetry I
- Alissa Mello (University of Exeter), “Charlotte Charke, Mother of Punch”
- Tracy Davis (Northwestern), “By George! How to Perform a Dragon”

10:30-11:30: Records and Reconstructing Puppetry II
- Leanne Groeneveld (University of Regina), “‘then and ther a handlinge’: The case of William Appowell, Puppet Spectator and Player”
- Richard Preiss (University of Utah), “Ventriloquizing Early English Puppet Theater”

11:30-12:30: Puppetry in the Mediterranean
- Clio Takas (Harvard), “Disjointed Articulations: Shadow Players from Ibn Dāniyāl to Spatharis”
- Christopher Swift (CUNY City Tech), “New Directions for Research on Puppetry in Al-Andalus”

12:30-1:30: Lunch break (catered lunch for speakers)

1:30-3:00: Puppetry and Transgression
- Patrick Kozey (Austin College), “Puppetry in a Medieval Iberian Performance Hierarchy”
- Phoenix Gonzalez (Northwestern), “The Catalonian Caganer: Making and Managing Waste in Late Medieval Performance”
- John Bell (UConn), “Puppets and Passion Plays: Bread and Puppet Theater’s 21st-Century Cycle Dramas”

3:00-3:30pm: Coffee break

3:30-5:30: Roundtable discussion with all participants, moderated by Nicole Sheriko & Michelle Oing

7:00: Casual gathering at BAR Pizza, 254 Crown St.
If you are staying in New Haven, please join us at BAR Pizza for some post- conference conversation and celebration. Drinks and food are available for purchase. Please note that you must be 21+ to enter BAR. Children/under 21s are permitted if accompanied by a parent; no under 21s permitted after 9pm.