Academic Man(nequin) on the Move

In true Timothy fashion, when I'm swamped with work, I keep finding more and more excuses not to do it (resulting in less and less time to actually do it). This week's no different. I'm taking off tomorrow to give a paper at the 2nd Annual Graduate Conference on Drama at UCA Thursday and Friday. That's right, adoring fans in the Central Arkansas area. I'll be in your neck of the woods for a little over 24 hours at the end of the week. Come watch as I attempt to dazzle the crowd with my feminist interpretation of the witches in Macbeth, wherein I even create my own word/concept: "witchspace." My idea is that since Shakespeare always locates the witches outside and in groups in his play, there is something to their marginalized, uncontainable (and uncontrollable) identities that allows them a social arena to 1.) trick Macbeth into pursuing his own selfish desires for kingship, 2.) thereby unleashing chaos on the patriarchal state. With relish.

Now, I'm not a Renaissance scholar, nor do I know a whole lot about the history of witchcraft in Jacobean England. But I do know a thing or two about powerful women, and these Weird Sisters have got some crazy subversive tricks up their sleeves. C'mon: they deal in the body parts of dead foreigners, non-Christians, and, my absolute favorite, murdered babies "ditch delivered by a drab."

drab: noun. slang for prostitute in Early Modern England

I might wear my black graduation robe, smear green makeup on my face, and dance around menacingly singing "double, double, toil and trouble" midway through the presentation. That way I can pass myself off as a crazy or an academic. They seem to be one in the same, don't they?

Wish me luck!