Ideas of Foreignness in an age of Expansion
New peoples, goods, languages and religions - how did the people of Elizabethan England understand the expanding world and their place within it? And just how different are our ideas today? Come and find out through performance - and challenge your own sense of the past.
From 9-11 June the University of Sussex will be participating in Universities Week with an event at the Natural History Museum in London.
The activity will take the form of an unknown short play from the 16th century. The play dramatizes the arrival of an ambassador from the Emperor of China to Queen Elizabeth I. This play is a fascinating reflection on issues of foreignness, and Queen Elizabeth I herself plays a part.
Performances will take place in various locations at the Natural History Museum in a pop-up style. There will be scheduled performances at key times throughout the day.
At the end of each performance Professor Matthew Dimmock will be on hand to answer any questions the audience may have and will be available to talk about his research in this area.
Visitors will be encouraged to question their own sense of foreignness and national narratives of identity as they learn about the long history of certain ideas and interactions.
This activity will further challenge popular preconceptions of perhaps the most celebrated period in British history - the Tutor/Stuart early modern period - and ask visitors to think about this period less as a golden age, and more as a period of tumultuous change and troubling new globalism.
The legacy of these changes is all around us, and in the way in which we think about the world. This activity is intended to stimulate reflection on that legacy.
Visitors will be able to collect lanyards and booklets with further information about the play, its context and Professor Dimmock’s research. There will also be links to the website where visitors will be able to access further information and a film of the playlet.
For more information on this activity, visit http://www.sussex.ac.uk/research/about/uw or contact Carly Brownbridge at research.initiatives@sussex.ac.uk