Abstract
While lecturing on the theatre of Jean Racine, Beckett dismissed the idea that these plays were in any way political: 'Not concerned with politics. [...] Politics [...] hardly mentioned'. Beckett, Politics, Beyond roundtable to accompany the launch of Samuel Beckett in Confinement at IASIL Annual Conference, Łódź (online).
While lecturing on the theatre of Jean Racine, Beckett dismissed the idea that these plays were in any way political: 'Not concerned with politics. [...] Politics [...] hardly mentioned'. The same cannot be said of recent scholarship on Beckett's work, which has produced a number of political readings in recent years. 'Beckett, Politics, Beyond' examined various ways we can conceptualise Beckett and politics, the shape of Beckett studies in the wake of the recent 'political turn' as well as how such scholarship enters into dialogue with broader disciplinary formations such as Irish studies, modernism and theatre studies.
Participants: James Little (Charles University and Masaryk University) James McNaughton (University of Alabama) Emilie Morin (University of York) Shaun Richards (Staffordshire University) Hannah Simpson (University of Oxford)