Shakespeare: The Authorship Question, a day-long conference exploring those questions, will take place Saturday, April 7, starting at 11am, at the Joseph G. Green Studio Theatre, 139 Centre for Film & Theatre, Keele campus. The conference is open to the public. Tickets cost $30, which will include a light lunch. Reservations must be made, but one can pay at the door.

Over the last century-and-a-half numerous scholars, artists and those who are simply curious have looked at the issue and have suggested quite publicly that the Bard of Avon may not be who we have long thought he was. Those doubters have included Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, Orson Welles, Helen Keller and, more recently, major artists such as Mark Rylance, first artistic director of the rebuilt Globe Theatre, actor Jeremy Irons and Sir Derek Jacobi. Even a judge from the United States Supreme Court – after hearing the arguments in a legal framework – said there were certainly grounds for reasonable doubt.

In recent years, dozens of books have been published interrogating these and related questions arguing for and against everyone from the standard candidate – the actor-manager from Stratford-upon-Avon William Shaksper (that is indeed how he generally spelled his name) – to  Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (the current most favoured candidate) to Italian-born and English-raised lexicographer John Florio. Sony Pictures’ recent film, Anonymous, has now drawn the wider public into the discussion.

The conference’s keynote speaker, Mark Anderson (left), author of the critically-acclaimed volume , has his own opinion on Shakespeare’s identity. Anderson will delve into the subject with his talk, "The Bard's New Clothes: Shakespeare's Autobiography and Why the Authorship Controversy Matters".

Professor Don Rubin (right), founding director of the MA and PhD programs in Theatre Studies and series editor of Routledge’s six-volume World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, will deliver opening remarks. Rubin, president of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association, is currently directing a fourth-year seminar at 91ŃÇÉ« on the authorship question.

Montreal actor Keir Cutler will then give a one-hour performance based on Mark Twain’s comic examination of the question, is Shakespeare dead? Cutler has performed the show all across North America.

In the afternoon, there will be a 90-minute panel debate on who wrote Shakespeare’s work, chaired by Rubin with panellists Anderson, Cutler, Italian-born scholar and editor Lamberto Tassinari of Montreal (a major proponent of John Florio), 91ŃÇɫ’s own Canada Research Chair in Theatre – Professor Christopher Innes of the Department of English (arguing for William of Stratford), David Prosser, communications director and former literary manager of the  Stratford Festival, and Michel Vais, editor of the Quebec theatre journal Jeu. There will also be a Q&A session with the audience.

The event is sponsored by the 91ŃÇÉ« Department of Theatre in association with 91ŃÇɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Winters College, Stong College, the Division of Humanities and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Research Fund.

For more information, to register or to support this event, contact Don Rubin at drubin@yorku.ca, or Tasha Gallant, part of the conference’s publicity committee, at Tash89@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Britzman, a Distinguished Research Professor in 91ŃÇÉ«'s Faculty of Education, defines how fundamental Freudian concepts such as the psychical apparatus, the drives, the unconscious, the development of morality and the transference have changed throughout Freud’s oeuvre. Freud and Education concludes with new Freudian-influenced approaches to the old dilemmas of educational research, theory and practice.

Right: Deborah Britzman

“People have very strong views about Freud and psychoanalysis. People are also passionate in their views about what education is and what it should be,” Britzman says, reflecting on her reasons for writing the book. “This book introduces Freud and psychoanalysis as well as education without the superstitions traditionally associated with these subjects.

“What happens to education if we begin with the idea that the subject is unconscious and begins in sexuality?” Britzman asks. “Freud insisted that human sexuality begins at birth and that the human is affected by its unconscious life.”

The book inspires critical thinking on such questions as: Why consider contemporary education through psychoanalytic theories? What does Freud teach is about the problems of dependency, aggression and group psychology in educational institutions? What did Freud think about the problem of education?

One key insight, Britzman says, comes from an essay, "Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology", which Freud wrote when he was 60.

“Freud said he did not know what affected him more: how teachers were as people, or what they know as teachers,” Britzman says. “Both are operative in learning environments. We often forget that, even in the university setting, personality matters.”

Freud and Education draws on Britzman's background. She trained as a psychoanalyst and is widely known for bringing psychoanalysis to discussions of contemporary pedagogy, teacher education, social inequality and problems of intolerance and historical crisis.

Part of the Routledge Press Key Ideas in Education series, the book’s back cover says Freud and Education “seeks to shape ongoing discussions in the field of education by putting the field’s contemporary luminaries in dialogue with its foundational figures and critical topics.”

Through her previous books – , , , , – and other scholarly writings, Britzman has won many awards for her contributions to education and psychoanalysis.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Professor Deborah Britzman's book examines psychoanalysis, Freud and education appeared first on Research & Innovation.