The 2003 NASSR Conference Committee invites you to participate in:

 Placing Romanticism: Sites, Borders, Forms to be held in midtown
Manhattan, New York City
August 1-5, 2003 at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University
Plenary Speakers Marilyn Butler Stuart Curran Claudia Brodsky Lacour
Jerome J. McGann

The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2003

About the Conference

 The North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR), in
association with the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS),
announces a
conference featuring transatlantic participation and themes, to take
place in New York City's cultural center. The conference themes have
been selected to
 represent a broad spectrum of approaches to Romanticism. Our title is
intended to encompass both the diverse cultural sites of the field as
well as its formal and
linguistic manifestations. To support these themes, we are planning a
wide array of theater performances, museum exhibits, musical concerts,
special tours, and
other cultural events in New York City. We have also secured a variety
of housing options in the midtown Manhattan area, including conference
discounts at
midtown hotels as well as inexpensive dormitory rooms at the Lincoln
Center campus of Fordham University.

In featuring the "cultural sites" of Romanticism, the conference will
also be highlighting the rich field of Romantic Theater, Spectacle, and
Performance. As a
special feature of the program, we will be presenting two modern-world
premier theater performances from the era. The first is Thomas Lovell
Beddoes'
Death's Jest Book in a version adapted by Jerome J. McGann--who will
also present a plenary lecture on the performance. The play is an
astonishing pastiche
combining Gothic spectacle, Romantic dream-vision, and Jacobean revenge
tragedy. As Beddoes' masterwork, it also incorporates some of his most
famous
 songs, and casts a new light on the evolution of what Byron called
"Mental Theatre." The second play to be performed will be Joanna
Baillie's Count Basil, an
enormously popular drama dealing with issues of courtship, infatuation,
the male gaze, and the position of women in the public sphere. This
professional
production will be presented by the Horizons Theatre, an award-winning
company directed by Leslie Jacobson. The conference will also feature
the first
Keats-Shelley Association Lecture, sponsored by one of the most
influential and longstanding organizations in the field. In addition,
the Keats-Shelley
Association will be sponsoring several special sessions on Antiquarian
Book Collecting, Library Culture, The History of the Museum, and The
Private Collection