About the launch:

MEMOs’ first pathbreaking edited collection re-examines the (mis)representation of the East on the early modern English outdoor and indoor stage, uncovering how conflicting representations of the East were communicated on stage through the material aspects of stage architecture, costumes and performance effects.

Join the editors as they celebrate the publication of this new collection with contributors, friends, colleagues and well-wishers.

About the book:

Despite the popularity of plays about the East, the representation of the East in early modern drama has been either overlooked, marginalized as footnotes or generalized into stereotypes. Materializing the East in Early Modern English Drama focuses on the multi-layered, often conflicting and changing perceptions of the East and how dramatic works made use of their respective theatrical space to represent the concept of the East in drama.

This volume re-examines the (mis)representation of the East on the early modern English outdoor and indoor stage and broadens our understanding of early modern theatrical productions beyond Shakespeare and the European continent. It traces the origin of conventional depictions of the East to university dramas and explores how they influenced the commercial stage. Chapters uncover how conflicting representations of the East were communicated on stage through the material aspects of stage architecture, costumes and performance effects.

The collection emphasizes these material aspects of dramatic performances and showcases neglected plays, including George Salterne's Tomumbeius, Robert Greene's The Historie of Orlando Furioso and Joseph Simons' Leo the Armenian, and puts them in conversation with William Shakespeare's The Tempest and John Fletcher's The Island Princess.

About the editors:

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Murat Öğütcü received his PhD degree with his dissertation entitled “Shakespeare’s Satirical Representation of the Elizabethan Court and the Nobility in His English History Plays” from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, Turkey, in 2016. From August 2012 to January 2013, he was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was the Head of the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Munzur University, Turkey, between 2016 and 2021. He is currently working at Adıyaman University, Turkey. He is the General Editor of the “Turkish Shakespeares” Project that aims to introduce texts, productions and research on Turkish Shakespeares to a broader international audience of students, teachers, and researchers. He is among the regional editors of the Global Shakespeares Project and the World Shakespeare Bibliography. Along with MEMOs Events Editor, Aisha Hussain, he is co-Editor of the MEMOs edited collection, Materializing the East in Early Modern English Drama, forthcoming from Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama (2023). He has written book chapters and articles on his research interests that include early modern studies, Shakespeare, and cultural studies. His recent essays include “Materializing Mamluks and Turks in Salterne’s Tomumbeius” (Arden, 2023), “Contemporary Turkish Shakespeares: New Breath to Old Lives” (Arden, 2023), “Elizabethan Audience Gaze at History Plays: Liminal Time and Space in Shakespeare’s Richard II” (Routledge, 2022), “İkinci Katil [The Second Murderer]: A Turkish Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, Macbeth” (English Studies, 2021), “Of Pistols and Pikes: Weapons of War in Shakespeare’s Henry V” (PU Blaise Pascal, 2021), “Teaching Shakespeare Digitally: The Turkish Experience” (Research in Drama Education, 2020), “Masculine Dreams: Henry V and the Jacobean Politics of Court Performance” (Cambridge UP, 2019), “Julius Caesar: Tyrannicide Made Unpopular” (Parergon, 2017), and “Shakespeare in Animation” (Hacettepe, 2014). He tweets @MuratOgutcu1985 .

Dr. Aisha Hussain oversees the Events page at Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs). Along with MEMOs researcher, Murat Öğütcü, she is also co-Editor of the MEMOs edited collection, Materialising the East in Early Modern English Drama, forthcoming from Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama (London: Bloomsbury, 2023). Aisha is a PhD candidate at the University of Salford whose research interests include of Turkish Otherness, fictional terror, Anglo-Ottoman commerce, gender studies, Orientalism, and, in particular, crusading and anti-crusading discourses in early modern English drama. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Drama (University of Salford, 2017) and a Master of Arts in Renaissance English Literature (University of Leeds, 2018). Aisha was awarded the Pathways to Excellence Studentship by the University of Salford upon commencing her PhD studies in September 2018. Her current research investigates how the emergence of a more positive theatrical Turkish type in the works of Fulke Greville, Thomas Goffe and Roger Boyle reflects, in a shift from their contemporaries, what can be considered an anti-crusading discourse. She tweets @AishaHussain96. She can be reached at [email protected] .