Aesthetics Out of Bounds: History and Art Outside the Frame

Michael Witmore mwitmore@andrew.cmu.edu Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies (412) 268-4215

In my past work I have been interested in the ways in which "spontaneity" served as a source of knowledge and rhetorical effects in the culture of the English Renaissance. My book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (co-winner of Perkins Prize for Narrative, 2003), explored the ways in which narrative depictions of "accidental events" allowed them to serve as moments of discovery around the turn of the seventeenth century. I am now finishing another book called Pretty Creatures: Children and the Agency of Fiction in the English Renaissance (forthcoming, Cornell) which is about the strange antics of children who performed on the London stage, in civic pageantry, and in English witchcraft trials.  I am also writing a short book called Shakespearean Metaphysics for Continuum Press that explores Shakespeare's "dramaturgical monism" in three plays (Lear, Twelfth Night, Tempest), using as reference points the philosophies of Spinoza, Bergson and Whitehead.  Finally, I am organizer of the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Melissa Ragona mragona@aol.com Assistant Professor in the School of Art (412-268-1874)

I was a fellow at the Center for Arts in Society in 2001-2002, and I was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of English during the 2002-2003 school year, where I coordinated the University Film Festival. I currently teach in the School of Art.