General Introduction: Shaw's Brave New World Conference, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 19-21 April 2001

The Conference, Shaw's Brave New World, held at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 19-21 April 2001, was sponsored by the Wisconsin Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Wisconsin Humanities Council supports public programs that engage the people of Wisconsin in the exploration of human cultures, ideas, and values. It is funded in part by the NEH, by the State of Wisconsin, and by other sources both public and private. Additional support was provided by Marquette University's Office of Student Development, Milwaukee Area Technical College, John Ogden, the Department of Performing Arts, the Department of English, Ruth Lyons, John Collins, Megan Jaskolski, Haggarty Museum of Art, and ASMU Special Events. Michael Gillespie, Department of English, organized the program that follows. I have modified it so that it reflects general interest for readers of SHAW, deleting, for example, specific references to precise presentation times and locations. Those speakers whose presentations appear in SHAW 23 are noted in bold type and appear in their chronological order of presentation.

Thursday, 19 April 2001: Morning and Afternoon Sessions

Opening Remarks from Michael Gillespie, organizer of the Conference Plenary Address from Ray Bradbury, "Predicting the Past, Remembering the Further"

[In a well-received plenary address, Ray Bradbury acknowledged his indebtedness to Bernard Shaw, John Huston, and others. He thrilled the audience with his many anecdotes about his own life and writings and enjoined members of the audience not to let the local news shape their lives with its "affluence of despair."]

Shaw's Closing Remarks

Martha Black (chair)	"Back to Methuselah: A 'Grand Precurser' [sic] to Finnegans Wake"
Valerie Murrenus	"Hostages of Heartbreak: The Women of Heartbreak House"
Peter Gahan	"The Achievement of Shaw's Later Plays, 1920-1939"
Elizabeth Gaines	"Staging Back to Methuselah"

Plenary Address from Dan H. Laurence, "Victorians Unveiled: Some Thoughts on Mrs Warren's Profession"

Teaching Shaw: An Informal Discussion [Jose Lanters (chair), Tom Rice, Don Wilmeth, and Dawn Duncan]

Shaw to the Left and the Right

Christopher Innes (chair)	"Utopian Apocalypses: Shaw, War, and H. G. Wells"
Alan Andrews	"Shaw, Wells, and the Huxleys: Disputing Science and the Further"
Daniel Strait	"'Fighting Friends': The Chesterton-Shaw Debates"
Stuart Baker	"Is the Holy Ghost a Scientific Fact? Why Shaw's Creative Evolution Might Become the Scientific Religion of the Twenty-first Century"

Under the Direction of Montgomery Davis, In the Beginning and The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas from Back to Methuselah were performed at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Shaw Festival the evening of 19 April 2001.

Friday, 20 April 2001: Morning and Afternoon Sessions

Plenary Address from Maureen Murphy, "Siobhan's Joan: Saint Joan and the Irish"

Shaw's Status on Academe, Theater, and Elsewhere: A Discussion [Gale Larson (chair), Sidney Albert, Julie Sparks, Richard Dietrich, Thomas Evans, and Dennis Johnson]

Conference participants were offered a box lunch and a performance/presentation of Tandem Productions' "Puncturing Pomposity: The Chesterton Connection."

Plenary Address from Rhoda Nathan, "All About Eve: Testing the Miltonic Formula"

Shaw and the Prisonhouse of Language

Maureen Hawkins	"Do Something! The Sense of No Ending in Shaw's Heartbreak House
Michel Pharand	"Joan Among the Fascists: Santa Giovanna in Rome"
Leonard Conolly (chair)	"Sir Barry Jackson and the British Premiere of Back to Methuselah" [Conolly's book on Shaw and Barry Jackson is now in publication. He has substituted his initial paper with "GBS and the BBS: In the Beginning (1923-1928)]

Shaw and the Modern Condition

Frank C. Manista (chair)	"'The Gulf of Dislike': Truth and the Postmodern Condition in Shaw's 'The Black Girl in Search of God'"
Brenda Henry-Offor	"The 'Isms' in Shaw's Early Plays"
Nicole Freim	"Cult of the Capitalist: Undershaft as Modern God"
Lagretta Tallent Lenker	"Bloody, Bold, and Resolute: Shaw's Daughters and Dramas"

Under the Direction...