DU Participates in Malaysia International Conference on Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (MICOLLAC)

     Malaysia International Conference on Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (MICOLLAC) organized by the Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia, has a reputation as a comprehensive conference covering areas of languages, literatures and cultures. The conference aims to look at how language universals continue to have an impact on language studies. At the same time, particular distinctions are also the foray of current investigations with simultaneous emphasis on cross-disciplinary perspectives that enrich the macro fields of the links between languages, literatures and cultures.
MICOLLAC brings together local and international academics, educators, planners and teaching professionals to exchange views and insights on past and current practices in the areas of languages, literatures and cultures with significance for future directions. Participants and attendees came form different parts of the world.
DU, represented by Dr. Mufeed Al-Abdullah, Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Applied Sciences, participated in the MICOLLAC 2009. He presented a paper in which he spoke about Shakespeare and the way of his understanding for both drama and life. The title of his paper was: "Traversing the Artistic Dramaturgy of Shakespeare to Probe the Natural Drama of Life." He says in his paper that Shakespeare is distinguished for using drama as a tool for understanding life. The analogy of drama and life permeates numerous plays of Shakespeare particularly AS You Like It, Macbeth, and Hamlet. There is also a lot about drama and dramaturgy in Shakespeare's plays. A very important component in the construction of the dramatic world of Shakespeare is the audience, an issue that is addressed emphatically in Hamlet. To intensify the dramatic construction, the drama / life analogy, and the role of the audience, Shakespeare introduces the technique of the play-within-play in Hamlet. The issue of the audience is given special attention and there are various types of audiences presented in the play: artistic audience, intrinsic audience, natural audience, and metaphysical audience. The artistic audience is the one that watches the inner play; the intrinsic audience is that which is addressed in the asides and soliloquies; the natural audience is the group of spectators watching the outer play and the inner play; the metaphysical audience is an assumed audience watching the drama of life in which people are the actors and actresses. The study aims to explore Shakespeare's construction of drama and the interchange between drama and life by way of understanding both.