Summary

International Seminar «Shakespeare in Interdisciplinary Humanities Research» has succeeded in becoming a multi-disciplinary space to develop and showcase new approaches to analyzing literary text and its role in historical, cultural and other humanitarian studies.

As planned in the grant application, the project team throughout the year 2015 organized 7 sessions of the seminar, each featuring a report given by the main speaker, as well as detailed contributions from 1 or 2 discussants.

Each of the sessions addressed a specific set of issues of how certain branches of the humanities address the Shakespearean heritage:

1. The Imagery of Shakespearean Period at the Junction of Literary Theory, Arts Studies and Psychology (V.A. Musvik, European Humanities University, VIInius — A.V. Markov, Moscow State University / Russian State University for the Humanities);

2. Translation and Its Role in Cultural and Textual Studies (A.A. Korchevskiy, Chemistry & Industrial Hygiene, Inc. — A.N. Baranov, Pushkin Fine Arts Museum / Russian State University for the Humanities);

3. Shakespeare's Historicism and Historicism in the Humanities (V.A. Kovalev, St. Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences — E.E. Krylova, St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture);

4. Shakespeare and the Digital Humanities (Tom Cheesman, University of Swansea — B.N. Gaydin, Moscow University for the Humanities);

5. Shakespearean Text on Stage and in the Book (V.R. Poplavsky, Gorizont theatre — N.V. Zakharov, Moscow University for the Humanities; A.N. Baranov);

6. Shakespeare and Theological Studies (A.G. Volkova, Kaluga Orthodox Theological Seminary — A.V. Shipilova, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities);

7. Shakespeare and Everyday Culture (V.S. Makarov, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities — I.I. Lisovich, Moscow University for the Humanities / Russian State University for the Humanities).

Each seminar featured a long and detailed discussion (no less than 40 minutes). Among those who participated in the discussion were scholars of Shakespeare, as well as of English and European cultures of the 16th and 17th centuries from the Russian academia (Russian University of Theatre Arts — GITIS, Moscow University for the Humanities, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities, St. Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow State Pedagogical University, HEIs from Ryazan, Kaluga, etc.), as well as from research institutes (State Institute of Art Studies, Institute of Fundamental and Applied Studies), independent researchers and foreign academics (University of Swansea, Tulane University, Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, European Humanities University). All in all, the seminar was attended by over 220 people (of whom 150 can be classified as young scholars, and 5 as international scholars). Each of the seminars were announced and later covered with extensive reports, as well as fully filmed and made available for free at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0800iCRc1X_600lUAiwcg_K_ICPbAPO.

The discussions at the seminar sessions made it possible to single out a number of research problems which lie in the focus of contemporary studies in the humanities in Russia. These include coping with the abuse of dichotomy and analogy as research methods; dealing with the subjective/objective experience of author, critic and scholar; bridging the gap between theoretical and practical research; and setting up a dialogical kind of interdisciplinarity, which is not reducible to transferring methodology and aspects of theory from one discipline into another. The seminar revealed an immense potential of de-hierarchized research in the humanities, which involves methodological reflection and a move away from «benchmarking» disciplines against each other. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the studies of a literary text as the most inclusive cultural space.

Seminar «Shakespeare in Interdisciplinary Humanities Research» will continue in the year 2016, and, hopefully, beyond.