[OPE] The International Association for Robin Hood Studies

Shouldn't we be formulating radical Robin Hood-type fiscal and monetary
policies?
In solidarity, Jerry

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies

Photo: George Eastman House Motion Picture Department, Douglas Fairbanks
Nitrate Stills Collection

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Robin Hood: Media Creature
An International Conference, 22-25 October 2009
University of Rochester, Rochester NY

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies invites paper and panel
proposals for its Seventh Biennial Conference, to be held 22-25 October 2009
at the University of Rochester, Rochester NY (USA). We welcome papers on
well-established and perennially controversial aspects of the outlaw hero;
we also welcome papers treating innovative and unfamiliar issues.
Submissions from scholars and intellectuals in all fields of academic,
artistic, and popular culture, with no limitations on time period, media, or
national literatures, are encouraged. The deadline for proposals is 15 June
2009.

While our knowledge of Robin Hood has inevitably depended on historical
events and archival records, even these cultural memories have been shaped
by the media that contain them. Moreover, for the vast majority of audiences
who have sung, watched, read, or cared about Robin Hood in the last six
hundred years, the outlaw has been a creation of the media that present him,
even as his capacity to enchant ever-new and increasing constituencies has
been re-shaped by what media can do and who these media can reach. The
Seventh Biennial Conference will feature a series of events that highlight
Robin Hood’s status as a creature of the media. The Conference will focus on
Robin Hood's popularity and influence across a variety of media – stage,
song, music, cinema, books, photographs, posters, and more – but it will
also sponsor contributions to our understanding of the perennial outlaw hero
and the traditions surrounding his stories from as wide a variety of
disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives as possible. The Conference
requests proposals that include (but are by no means limited to) medieval
and early modern historical studies, literary criticism, folklore,
musicology and music practice, children’s literature, cultural studies,
anthropology, film and media studies, performance art and oral recitations,
art history, literary theory, and philosophy.

Highlights of the Seventh Biennial Conference:
Plenary speakers:
Professor Helen Phillips (University of Cardiff), whose recent publications
include Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (2005), Bandit Territories:
British Outlaws and their Traditions (2008), and Introduction to the
Canterbury Tales: Fiction, Reading, Context (2000, 2005). She is co-editor
of the series, Medieval Christianity and Culture, and has edited and
published more than a score of other books and articles.
Website:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/contactsandpeople/profiles/phillips-helen.html

Ms. Gillian Anderson (Bologna), internationally renowned composer,
conductor, and musicologist, has participated in the reconstruction and
performance of some thirty-four orchestral scores from silent films. She has
written four books, including Music for Silent Films, 1894-1929. Her many
articles include “Musical Missionaries: ‘Suitable’ Music in the Cinema,
1913-1915,” and “A Warming Flame: Music in the Silent Cinema” (available at
her website). She is the founding editor of the new journal, Music and the
Moving Image (University of Illinois Press).
Website: http://www.gilliananderson.it

Plenary events:
Twenty-First Century “World Premiere” of Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood
(United Artists, 1922). A new 35mm tinted print, restored by the Museum of
Modern Art and George Eastman House, will be screened 24 October 2009
(Saturday) before an audience of 500 at the Dryden Theatre, George Eastman
House.

Live Accompaniment for Robin Hood. Renowned musicologist Gillian Anderson
will conduct a live orchestra playing the score of Robin Hood, newly
reconstructed by Ms. Anderson herself. The showing will duplicate the
experience of audiences who attended the first-ever Hollywood premier, and
of those in early twentieth-century movie palaces. The screening will be
introduced by Patrick Loughney, Head, National Audio-Visual Conservation
Center, Library of Congress (Packard Campus).

Concert of Early Lute Music. Grammy-Award winner, and four time nominee,
Paul O’Dette will offer a recital of Elizabethan Greenwood and Robin
Hood-related lute music, drawing upon the repertoire he established in
albums including Robin is to the Greenwood Gone (1992) and Robin Hood:
Elizabethan Ballad Settings (2001). Mr. O'Dette's albums are currently
available from Amazon.com and other outlets.

Operetta in Performance. Steven Daigle (Chair, Strings, Eastman School of
Music, and Artistic Director, Ohio Light Opera) has organized an evening of
arias and songs from Robin Hood musicals, spanning the eighteenth to the
twentieth centuries. This presentation will occur the evening of 22 October
2009 (Thursday), and will feature musicians and singers from the Ohio Light
Opera, as well as faculty and students from the Eastman School of Music and
the University of Rochester. Professor Daigle’s 2004 production with the
Ohio Light Opera of Reginald de Koven’s Robin Hood (1891) is available as a
CD from Amazon.com and other outlets.

Events and Exhibitions:
An Impression of the Middle Ages: Productions Stills from Douglas Fairbanks
in Robin Hood. A major exhibition drawing upon an archive of nearly 1000
negatives at George Eastman House, most never exhibited or examined before.
These include star portraits, production set-ups, special effects, and shots
of the largest and most expensive set in the history of Hollywood to 1922.
The exhibition will also include original posters and lobby cards, and the
boots which Fairbanks wore in the film. Department of Rare Books and Special
Collections, University of Rochester. Support and contributions from George
Eastman House Motion Picture Department, and the University of Rochester
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

The Americanization of Robin Hood, 1883-1923. A focused exhibition, tracing
the development of American images of Robin Hood which have permanently
changed the outlaw’s status in international popular culture. The exhibit
will incorporate Fairbanks photographs from "Still Magic," and open with a
lavishly documented account of the impact and history of Howard Pyle’s The
Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, from the first American and English editions
to the latest reprints and rip-offs, followed by an exhibition of music,
lyrics, advertisements, programs, and photographs associated with the
operettas of Reginald De Koven, including Robin Hood (1891) and Maid Marian
(1901). By the 1920s Pyle had attained near-cult status, and De Koven's
works had been played tens of thousands of times, live in metropolitan opera
houses and stages, in all the small towns across the United States, as well
as through frequent local and national radio broadcasts. We hope as well to
be able to show materials related to Robin Hood Junior (1923), the juvenile
sequel to the Fairbanks film. Department of Rare Books and Special
Collections, University of Rochester. Support and contributions from George
Eastman House, the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the
Sibley Music Library, and a private collection.

Robin Hood: Media Creature. An exhibition of Robin Hood-related materials,
ranging from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries, in all media –
selected from thousands of items in paper media (printed books, sheets,
ephemera, cartoons, comic books, boys’ serials, garlands, prose lives,
“histories,” posters from well known and obscure films and TV), film and TV
recordings (DVDs, VCR tapes, various film formats of commercial, public, and
cable productions), musical recordings (popular song, operettas, rock and
roll, rap, soundtracks, spoken word, and more), photographs (including a
selection from previously un-exhibited “keybooks” for The Adventures of
Robin Hood with Errol Flynn (1938), along with other artifacts such as
games, puzzles, viewmaster reels, teapots and plates, and more. The Robbins
Library, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester. Support and
contributions from the Strong National Museum of Play, George Eastman House,
the Rossell Hope Robbins Library, Rush Rhees Library, Department of Rare
Books and Special Collections, and a private collection.

East Coast Premier of Robin Hood (Éclair America, 1912). Screening of the
earliest surviving film featuring the outlaw hero, in a recently restored
print (shown so far only once, in Los Angles) from the Fort Lee Film
Commission. With solo musical accompaniment by Philip Carli, renowned film
expert and musicologist who has accompanied silent films at the Pordenone
Festival in Italy, and elsewhere in Europe and North America.

***
The conference will begin with simultaneous sessions on Thursday afternoon
(October 22), and panels will proceed through Sunday morning (October 25).
Highlights include operetta performances Thursday evening, a banquet on
Friday evening, and the screening of Robin Hood on Saturday night. Helen
Phillips will offer her plenary lecture on Friday morning. There will be a
concluding session on Sunday morning, featuring a panel of experts from
George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress,
addressing issues of film history, popular culture, and the preservation of
national treasures like Robin Hood (1922), moderated by Professor Stephen
Knight (University of Cardiff). Gillian Anderson will then deliver her
plenary lecture on the musical environment for silent cinema. The conference
will conclude with a fare-well luncheon.

Proposals for papers and for panels on all Robin Hood-related topics –
including outlaw traditions, spin-offs, and imitations in all media – are
warmly invited. Accommodations have been arranged at the Staybridge Inn, in
close walking distance from the campus of the University of Rochester, at a
special discount. Information on Conference Registration will appear at
www.rochester.edu/robinhood.

Send paper abstracts (limit 300 words) and panel proposals to Thomas Hahn at
IARHS.Conference@gmail.com. All files should be composed in MS Word or
compatible formats. The deadline for submissions is 15 June 2009.

The Seventh Biennial Conference on Robin Hood Studies is sponsored by the
International Association for Robin Hood Studies, the Humanities Project at
the University of Rochester, the Cluster on Premodern Studies, Rush Rhees
Library and the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the
Rossell Hope Robbins Library, and the Department of English of the
University of Rochester, with contributions from the Strong National Museum
of Play, the Eastman School of Music through its students, faculty, and
departments, the Sibley Music Library, George Eastman House, and Monroe
Community College.

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Received on Tue May 5 14:35:18 2009