Conferences

Our first conference will take place in October/November 2024. The topic will be »Fans in the theatre? About unbeloved fannish spectators and theatre’s self-image 1860–1920«. If you are interested in participating, please send us an email: stephan.schroeder@uni-koeln.de

  • Date: 23.–25.10.2024.
  • Location: Schloss Wahn, near Cologne.
  • Conference announcement: Are there fans in the theatre, be it of individual actors and actresses, of the institution, of particular plays, or individual directors? Do fandom with its practices and the theatre have an important intersection that helps us better understand both the history of fandom and of theatre? The state of research is a timid, tentative ›yes‹ – tentative, because research has just begun to pay attention to this intersection: Fandom and the stage, Fandom Studies and Theatre Studies have seldom been related to each other. Although few in number, scholarly contributions have underlined the im­portance and topicality of the need to explore theatre and fans in interaction. The confer­ence intends to contribute to this productive interdisciplinary border traffic by bringing the most distinguished scholars in this field into dialogue both with each other and with promising researchers of the younger generation.
conference illustration

(Evangeliemandens Liv (The Candle and the Moth, Denmark 1915), by courtesy of Danish Film Institute)