Simon Shepherd

Bio: Simon Shepherd is an academic researcher from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. The author has contributed to research in topics: Drama & Performance studies. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 17 publications receiving 321 citations. Previous affiliations of Simon Shepherd include Goldsmiths, University of London.

Amazons and warrior women: Varieties of feminism in seventeenth-century drama

Abstract: Analyzes the roles of both strong-minded and antagonistic women in the plays of seventeenth-century English authors including Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Dekker.

Theatre, body and pleasure

Abstract: Introduction: Theatrically imagined bodies Part 1: Body and Script 1. Script as a Discipline of the Body 2. Theatre and Bodily Value 3. The Wrong Dog: An account of significant inaction Part 2: In Time and Space 4. Just at That Very Moment 5. Look Out Behind You Part 3: Beyond Integrity 6. Strutting, Bellowing, Muscles and Noise 7. Lolo's Breasts and a Wooden Christ 8. Dissipation Bibliography

English Drama: A Cultural History

Abstract: Acknowledgements. User's Guide. 1. Medieval Theatre. 2. The Beginning of the Story of Drama. 3. Renaissance Drama. 4. The Image of Elizabethan Drama. 5. Restoration Comedy. 6. Bawdy, Manners and the English National Character. 7. Melodrama. 8. The Unacceptable Face of Drama. 9. Naturalism. 10. 'You Make Me Feel Mighty Real': Proper Drama. 11. Post-War British Theatre and the State. 12. Drama in the Age of Television. Chronological List of Plays. References. Index.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

A companion to women in the ancient world

Abstract: A Companion to Women in the Ancient World is the first interdisciplinary, methodologically based collection of readings to address the study of women in the ancient world while weaving textual, visual, and archaeological evidence into its approach. Prominent scholars tackle the myriad problems inherent in the interpretation of the evidence, and consider the biases and interpretive categories inherited from centuries of scholarship. Essays and case studies cover an unprecedented breadth of chronological and geographical range, genres, and themes.

The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery

Abstract: IN A RECENT ESSAY on gender as a category of historical analysis, Joan Wallach Scott advances two integrally connected propositions: "Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based upon perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power."' The first proposition "involves four interrelated elements: first, culturally available symbols that evoke multiple (and often contradictory) representations"; "second, normative concepts that set forth interpretations of the meanings of the symbols, that attempt to limit and contain their metaphoric possibilities" (43); third, the realizations of those various alternative or contestatory possibilities that are marginalized or suppressed by the normative or dominant, and which must be recovered by subsequent critical-historical analysis; and fourth, the employment of such historically specific (though not necessarily stable or consistent) cultural representations in the making of gendered subjective identities. Scott's second proposition refers to gender as one of the fundamental modes in which ideological and material reality are organized:

Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England

Abstract: An extended study of gender and crime in early modern England. It considers the ways in which criminal behaviour and perceptions of criminality were informed by ideas about gender and order, and explores their practical consequences for the men and women who were brought before the criminal courts. Dr Walker's innovative approach demonstrates that, contrary to received opinion, the law was often structured so as to make the treatment of women and men before the courts incommensurable. For the first time, early modern criminality is explored in terms of masculinity as well as femininity. Illuminating the interactions between gender and other categories such as class and civil war have implications not merely for the historiography of crime but for the social history of early modern England as a whole. This study therefore goes beyond conventional studies, and challenges hitherto accepted views of social interaction in the period.

Handbook to life in Renaissance Europe

Abstract: The word renaissance means "rebirth," and the most obvious example of this phenomenon was the regeneration of Europe's classical Roman roots. The Renaissance began in northern Italy in the late 14th century and culminated in England in the early 17th century. Emphasis on the dignity of man (though not of woman) and on human potential distinguished the Renaissance from the previous Middle Ages. In poetry and literature, individual thought and action were prevalent, while depictions of the human form became a touchstone of Renaissance art. In science and medicine the macrocosm and microcosm of the human condition inspired remarkable strides in research and discovery, and the Earth itself was explored, situating Europeans within a wider realm of possibilities. Organized thematically, the Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe covers all aspects of life in Renaissance Europe: History; religion; art and visual culture; architecture; literature and language; music; warfare; commerce; exploration and travel; science and medicine; education; daily life.