Performance Studies International

This month I went to Tanger on behalf of PSi to attend Khalid Amine’s ICPS, International Center for Performance Studies conference, Performing Tangier 2008. http://icpsresearch.blogspot.com/2007/12/welcome.html
This is an amazing city as you may know and a great place for a conference. Khalid’s conference brings together scholars in Literary studies, Ethno-musicology, Middle eastern studies and African studies. Papers were given in Arabic, English, French and Spanish. This is a truly international event and a very welcoming one. I would like to thank them for all their kindness and hospitality. Let me encourage members to think about this conference which is held in May every year as a possible venue for your own work.

The Dwight Conquergood Award 2008 has now been finalized. The winners are Farah Yeganeh and Masoud Nourmohammadian, Activist-artists from Iran and Rebecca Caines, an emerging scholar based in Belfast, UK. Let me congratulate them and all the applicants who made this year’s decision such a difficult one. The award exists to honour the memory of Dwight Conquergood and his contribution to performance scholarship and to Performance Studies international by promoting the work of ‘an artist, an activist or an emerging academic conducting research or working on projects with disenfranchised communities’. The award will cover the cost of attending the PSi conference, including travel, accommodation and registration fees.

Please check the updates from the PSi 14 conference organizing team (below) and look out for more details from the organizers of PSi 15 in Zagreb in the next issue of the digest.

Best wishes,

Edward Scheer
President, PSi

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2. From PSi # 14 in Copenhagen

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
Register and pay for the conference at the website www.interregnum.dk, under Registration. Please note that you need to register and pay for the conference, also if you are presenting a paper or a performance.

MODERATORS/CHAIRS
We need more people to sign up to be moderators/chairs on panels. The task will to keep time during a panel session and make sure all presentations are kept within the scheduled time frame. A moderator may also choose to give a short introduction of the panel or address the theme to open a discussion with the floor. You will NOT be asked to help with technical details or practical matters, this will be managed by volunteers. If you want to be a moderator/chair for a panel, or if you have arranged for a moderator/chair for your own panel, send a mail to: info@interregnum.dk

PROGRAMME
From June 1, you will be able to see the full programme on the conference website www.interregnum.dk. There may be changes in the programme from now until the conference, so make sure you visit the site once in a while and update yourself on changes.

From the website you can download abstracts and biographical statements for all participants. If your own is missing, please send us materiale for upload to info@interregnum.dk

CHILDCARE AT THE CONFERENCE
We are working on setting up a kind of childcare facility at the conference where children can be looked after for a couple of hours while their parents join a panel. If you think this could be of interest for you, please send a mail to info@interregnum.dk.

hyPERFORM

hyPerform.dk featuring PassingByTheatre
Random Reality
June 4th – July 2th 2008
Curator Karen Toftegaard/AirPlay
On the 4th of June hyPerform.dk is pleased to launch Random Reality an exhibition curated by the art association AirPlay presenting the Danish performance group PassingByTheatre with two video documentations.
PassingbyTheatre actions challenge the framings for how and where theatre can be experienced. It could be seen as theatres version of Street Art. The works are conceptual living pictures and are to be experienced as a free theatre- and art event in public realm.

AirPlay was founded in 2006 as a Copenhagen based outdoor gallery, which presents digital and performative art in the urban public realm.

hyPerform is an online Internet gallery associated the Performance Studies international conference PSi # 14 INTERREGNUM: In Between States.

Be sure to visit hyPerform, the Interregnum web gallery, at www.hyperform.dk

On behalf of the organising committee
Gunhild Borggreen

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3. New PSi Performance & Philosophy Working Group

All PSi members are invited to join the new Performance & Philosophy Working Group.

The group, which will be initially co-chaired by myself, Laura Cull (University of Exeter) and Josh Abrams (Roehampton University), was proposed in order to encourage debate and collaboration between PSi members who have in common their engagement in philosophy as it intersects with performance studies.

The Performance and Philosophy Working Group will have its first meeting at the next PSi conference in Copenhagen in August 2008 (exact date and time tbc). At this meeting we will be discussing:

- what the principle business of the working group will be;
- what research questions the group might collaboratively pursue;
- what kind of projects the group might undertake in the future.

If you would like to become a member of this working group, please send an expression of interest to Laura Cull: lkc202@ex.ac.uk or simply join us at the Copenhagen meeting.

Laura Cull
PhD Research Student
Performing Presence Project
http://presence.stanford.edu/
School of Performance Arts
Department of Drama
University of Exeter

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CALLS FOR PAPERS (CONFERENCES AND PUBLICATIONS)

4. CFP: New Radical Subjectivities: Re-thinking Agency for the 21st Century Conference, Sept 19 2008, U of Nottingham, UK (due May 30)

Keynote Speaker - Professor Peter Hallward (Middlesex University)

Peter Hallward is the author of Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing between the Singular and the Specific (Manchester, 2001), Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minnesota, 2003), Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (Verso, 2006), and most recently, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (Verso, 2007).

This one day conference for postgraduate students and early career researchers explores recent articulations of subjectivity and political agency in critical theory and cultural studies. The continued ascent of neo-liberalism and economic globalisation, along with postmodern and poststructuralist theorising around subjectivity, potentially sets a dangerously de-politicised subject against the expanding forces and inequalities of contemporary capitalism.

Over the last twenty-five years, theoretical writings on the left have stressed the need to locate subject positions beyond the reductionism of an orthodox Marxism, and the disabling extremes of liberal anti-essentialism. Concepts which continue to posit some form of subjective agency have attempted to respond to the human issues at stake in contemporary political formations without compromising a theoretical commitment to a discursively produced subject. From Gayatri Spivak's 'strategic essentialism' and Laclau and Mouffe's 'radical democracy' to more recent articulations such as Hardt and Negri's 'multitude' and the Lacanian and post-Lacanian thought of Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou, these writers all stress the continuing importance of leftist theories of the subject that can provide a theoretical antidote to the excesses of relativist pluralism and identity politics.

Such thinkers as Fredric Jameson and Susan Buck-Morss therefore stress the importance of posing agency at a trans-individual and collective level. These positions emphasise the importance of opposition and agonism in any radical politics, rather than consensual or 'third way' liberalism. Collective identities therefore continue to offer a crucial grounding for Leftist (re)considerations of subjectivity as a necessary form of agency for radical change, even if these groupings prove to be only ever strategic or temporary.

We invite papers from researchers working in critical theory, cultural studies, literature, film, the visual arts, history, politics and the social sciences which explore, but are not limited to, the following questions:

- Is the subject still the locus for a radical left politics?
- What forms of radical or oppositional agency are now emerging?
- What roles can class, gender and ethnicity play for new subjectivities?
- Does the left need to go beyond opposition and resistance towards the construction of new 'subjective' political spaces?
- What aesthetic or cultural forms are currently engaging with and creating new subjective or collective agencies?
- What contributions can Lacanian and post-Lacanian thought make to contemporary political subjectivity?
- Are theories of subjectivity currently responding adequately to developments in a globalized resistance, such as the anti-globalization movement, the resurgence of the left in Latin America, and religious fundamentalisms?
- Do changes in social production initiated by economic and cultural globalization offer a new potential for collective emancipation, or are they only ever complicit with a hegemonic global capitalism?
- Do digital technologies offer new ways for rethinking agency?
- What is the role of Utopia in new political formations?

Abstracts of 200-250 words should be submitted by e-mail as a Word attachment to newradicalsubjectivities@gmail.com by 30th May 2008 and should include name, affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper and 4 keywords.

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5. CFP: ‘The Laughing Stalk’ Book (due May 31)

'The Laughing Stalk' is a collection of writing about live comedy and its audiences. The book will include contributions by scholars, writers and comedians, and will focus on the dynamics of audience behaviour. The anthology will cover themes including: cultural and historical differences in comedy audience practice; the architecture of the audience; the reception of 'low' versus 'high' live comedy; the subjectivity of audience members and the spread of affect; the two-way relationship between joker and listener; and the comedy club as a distinct spatial and emotional environment. The book is under contract with the Parlor Press (www.parlorpress.com), a press run entirely by scholars, writers and artists. As such, it promotes interdisciplinary and original projects. The anthology will be part of a series exploring links in art practice and scholarship.

I am currently seeking essays that explore:
-the performer-audience contract - in particular from a psychoanalytic perspective
-culture and the audience - this could address both how culture shapes audience behaviour (through analyses that address nationality, class, gender, race, age, sexual orientation), and how audience responds to cultural difference (prejudice would be the key here)

Please send 1 page abstracts to judith.batalion@courtauld.ac.uk by 31 May 2008.

Thank you,
Kélina Gotman
Columbia University

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6. CFP: Black Play Lab, July 18 – Aug 3 2008, and Mini-Conference on Black Theatre, Aug 1-3 2008, Indiana U, Bloomington, US (due June 1)

From ancient times to the present, dramatic literature has been fundamental to the understanding of history and culture. Our perception of Greek, European, African and American civilization (new and old) has been shaped, in a large part, by readings of the dramatic literature of those cultures. African American dramatic literature has been an important part of the study into the experiences of cultural, psychological and physical circumstances of African Americans and those who have been part of this experience. The first dramatic literatures, the plays of Williams Wells Brown, for instance, have greatly contributed to our understanding of the physical and psychological circumstances of the first Africans in America, both free and enslaved. Our current understanding of our culture and society in the U.S. is deepened by readings of popular culture, including live theatre and its dramatic literature. However, in the past ten years, less than 20 new African American plays have received significant professional productions on the regional stage. More than half of those that have been produced can be attributed to one writer (August Wilson). There are huge silences in the scholarship of American theatre when it comes to identifying the contributions of African American dramatic literature and performance.

Despite all of this, African American writers playwrights have continued to dedicate themselves to live, non-profit theatre turning out a prolific body of work that is in danger of being lost forever to future readers, scholars and players. The unaddressed works of African American dramatic literature represents a silence - an absence of black opinion on the most crucial issues of the times. If these works remain unattended, a wealth of insight into the 20th and 21st century Black existence will be lost to future generations and another great silence surrounding Black Americans will have been created.

Call of Papers and Participation in the mini-conference August 1-3rd, 2008
Indiana University, Bloomington

The mini-conference seeks to stimulate scholarship and discussion surrounding Black theatre – its relevance, creation and practice. We seek to create definitions of Black theatre, both continental and abroad, and interrogate it within the context of the Black community, the nation and in relationship to other popular culture as well as identity and honor Black theatre artists, past and present. The conference is organized around a two-week play development workshop with playwrights Robert Alexander and Niyi Coker, Jr., who will be developing new plays that will be presented at the conference with professional directors, dramaturg and actors. Papers, workshops, panel discussions and reports are invited on any aspect of Black theatre and performance.

We are seeking participation from scholars, playwrights, directors and other practitioners of Black theatre and performance. Please send abstracts and proposals of 250 words or less (Word or rtf format), along with a current CV via email to conference organizer, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe by midnight EDT, June 1, 2008.

E-mail: ecoopera@indiana.edu.
(Pay particular attention to the ‘a’ at the end ‘cooper’ of the email-address!)

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7. CFP: ‘Teaching the Body’, Transformations journal (due June 1)

The editors of Transformations, a peer-reviewed journal, seek pedagogical articles (5,000 – 10,000 words) and pedagogical media reviews (books, film, video, performance, art, music, etc. – 3,000 to 5,000 words) that explore the body in a variety of pedagogical contexts and from diverse disciplinary perspectives—literature, science, women’s and gender studies, anthropology, folklore, history, psychology, sociology, art, photography, geography, religion, cultural studies, working-class studies, ethnic studies, disability studies, age studies, narrative medicine. and others.

Topics might include: the body in global and transnational contexts; the culture of self-help; environmental issues; im/migration and transnational labor; body rituals and body modification (from tattooing and piercing to cosmetic surgery); reproductive rights; transgender, intersex, and queer bodies; bodies and sports; bodies and religion; military bodies; disciplining the bodies; imprisoned bodies; body economics; bodily knowledge; the body in virtual spaces; students as bodies; language of genetics in discussion of bodies; bodies as biological entities; bionic bodies; online communities (icons and avatars).

Send a hard copy in MLA format (6th ed.): Jacqueline Ellis and Edvige Giunta, Editors, Transformations, New Jersey City University, Hepburn Hall Room 309, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305 OR email submissions and inquiries to: transformations@njcu.edu. Email submissions should be sent as attachments in MS Word or Rich Text format. For submission guidelines go to www.njcu.edu/assoc/transformations.

Published semi-annually by New Jersey City University

Edvige Giunta
Editor, Transformations
Department of English
New Jersey City University
2039 Kennedy Blvd.
Jersey City, NJ 07305

201-200-3086 (English Department)
201-200-3071 (Transformations)
201-200-3051 (Fax, Transformations)

egiunta@njcu.edu

http://faculty.njcu.edu/egiunta
http://web.njcu.edu/sites/transformations/

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8. CFP: ‘The Making and Remaking of European Memory After 1945’, Symposia July 2 and Oct 24 2008, U of Reading and Birkbeck, UK (due June 6)

Papers are sought for two symposia on the making and remaking of European memory after 1945 to be held at Reading in July and Birkbeck in October. The symposia aim to provide an interdisciplinary forum for exploring how memory has been variously invented, represented, fictionalised, contested, displaced, neglected and negotiated in European culture after 1945.
Contributions, which should be planned for about 15 minutes, are welcome from any aspect of the visual arts, design, film, the dramatic arts, television, literature, politics and cultural histories in Europe after the Second World War.

Please submit the title of your proposed paper with a brief abstract to:
Gabriel Koureas g.koureas@bbk.ac.uk
Sue Malvern s.b.malvern@reading.ac.uk
Nick Chare n.chare@reading.ac.uk
by 6 June 2008

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9. CFP: ‘No-place Choreography and Corporeal Topographies’, Seminar at the ASTR Conference, Nov 5-9 2008, Boston, US (due June 6)

Conveners: Katherine Mezur, University of Washington, Seattle, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta University of Washington, Seattle

What is the relationship between home and no-place and how is that relationship enacted, protected or disrupted, specifically, by dance or body-based performance? How do national and trans-national choreographies "move" the bodies situated within them, and the bodies watching them? Are we seduced or coerced to feel or think a certain way about those bodies and their "homes" or "nations"? Is "no-place" dancing possible? Are moving and dancing bodies not specifically mapped, but instead "in-process" in their own dynamic corporeal topography? Our working group seeks to place dance and body-centered performance, along with their techniques and choreographic methods, at the center of a lively debate on questions and problems concerning the migration, immigration, and exile of bodies, dances, and choreographic methods in a now globalized circuit of world performance.

We invite participants to imagine, critique and theorize for themselves what a no-place is or might be. We initially conceived of "no-place" as a range of displaced embodiments that expose how choreographies or the structures of corporeal performance, define, discipline, and erase specific bodily practices. We also consider how bodily knowledges press on notions of globalization, suggesting that choreography, because of its complex kinesthetic and sensuous power, can "unsettle" the easy narratives of mapping and marking bodies. Could we begin to formulate a post-globalization theory, based on kinesthetic theories and choreographic paradigms?
We are particularly interested in transnational performance occasions, which transform and dis-place "other" bodies. Dancers and dances also move across and through locations and become permeable to multiple ruptures. These bodies create a specifically charged "no-place" that had previously been unimaginable (such as Butoh’s mapping onto non-Japanese bodies in Europe and the States). Do "local" dances and their specific practices and beliefs deeply and kinesthetically map dancing bodies and their performances? Or do these contemporary choreographies, with their forms and movement inventions fit seamlessly and transparently onto "other" bodies from "other" places? Further, have contemporary dance and performance become homogenizing and/or nationalizing forces that can displace the bodies and their dances so that they are anywhere or "no-place"? Could dance offer resistant and creative strategies to these forces?

Format
By October 1st, participants will submit a 3-6 page paper to the group. Everyone will read all the papers. We will divide participants into smaller groups for focused email exchanges in preparation for our conference session. To further guide and give us a common ground for discussion, we will circulate two articles for everyone to consider in relationship to their research. Papers should describe a movement sequence and engage the sequence with theories related to our no-place theme. We will show video clips and/or still images of our performance examples via the internet, or show clips at the conference.

We invite scholars and practitioners to join us in our investigation. Please send a 200 word abstract and short bio to both working group leaders by Friday June 6th: Katherine Mezur, kmezur@sbcglobal.net and Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, lisaj6@u.washington.edu.

Notification of acceptance by June 16th

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10. CFP: ‘Materiality / Process / Performativity’, Creative Practice / Creative Research Symposium, July 10-12 2008, York St John U, UK (due June 6)

In Artforum in April 1970, sculptor Robert Morris noted with regret that creative process held little sway for the meanings imbibed for 'art' by contemporary criticism and the histories of art. His insistence on the imperatives of what he named 'the submerged side of the iceberg' came on the cusp of the 'New Art History.' The advent of post-modern theory and the social history of art located the material production of art at an intersection of history and the social. Practice was thus liberated from the (psycho)biographical expressivity and mastery of the gesture. Hitherto these had been the only means by which making had been thought. And yet the object of critical and historical discourse has remained profoundly visual. Situated in the gallery like so many dead objects 'art's' materiality, the trace of a means to an ends, has remained caught between formalism and semiotics. It is that to which theory has been applied and by which history is index after the fact.

Creative Practice/Creative Research seeks to elucidate and participate in the generation of a body of scholarship written by both critics and practictioners that has begun to transform the theoretical and historical frameworks through which art's making can signify.

To insist upon the work of art as a 'co-poiësis' (Ettinger, 1997) of 'poiëtic revealing' (Bolt, 2007) is to read art production beyond the locus of a discrete subject bound solely to the paradigms of 'representation.' Rather such a shift foreground the 'dialogical' and 'per formative' means through which art's work may lead research. The emergence of this practice led intervention thus transforms the territories by which 'work' and materiality may be encountered by maker and viewer.

This international symposium seeks to creatively draw from emerging and established voices in the practice, criticism, history, and curation of the creative arts. It seeks to explore the particular logic, diversity and implications of the work of art both for its own sake and for the history of art and art criticism, cultural theory, curatorial practice and the pedagogies of art.

Speakers
Steve Baker, UCLAN, UK
Estelle Barrette, Deakin University, AUS
Rosemary Betterton, Lancaster University, UK
Barb Bolt, University of Melbourne, AUS
Vanessa Corby, York St John University, UK
Bracha Ettinger, European Graduate School, Switzerland
Pam Longobardi, Georgia State University, USA
Roddy Hunter, York St John University, UK
Linda Weintraub, Independent Scholar, USA
Elizabeth Watkins, Bristol University, UK

Proposed Panels
Material Thinking: Practice Led Interventions in the History of Art
Bodies of Knowledge: Genders, ethnicity, sexuality, class
Eco-Logical Practice
Unruly Objects: Materiality/Process/Performativity
Dance and the Document: Tracking Performativity
Processing Memory/Psychic Mechanisms
Pedagogy & Practice Led Research

Website @ www.yorksj.ac.uk/creativepractice

Abstracts for papers may be submitted via email by 6th June 2008
James Alexander, Senior Administrative Assistant-Project & Outreach
J.Alexander@yorksj.ac.uk

Faculty of Arts
York St John University
Lord Mayors Walk
York
YO31 7EX

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11. CFP: ‘Transmission: Mobilizing Theatrical Movement’, Unsettling Theatre: Migration, Map, Memory, Nov 5-9 2008, Boston, US (due June 6)

Call for ASTR Working Session Contributions

Transmissions: Mobilizing Theatrical Movement
Conveners: Paul Rae, National University of Singapore; Martin Welton, Queen Mary, University of London

The aim of this working session is to explore the relationship between globalized mobility and theatrical movement, and to identify how best to research, interpret and articulate that relationship.

In part, we take our cue from Edward Said’s essay ‘Traveling Theory’ (1983). There, he writes that one of the four stages ‘common to the way any idea or theory travels’ is that ‘there is a distance transversed, a passage through the pressure of various contexts as the idea moves from an earlier point to another time and place where it will come into a new prominence’ (227). The group's discussions will address the phenomenon of theatrical movement in an age of hyper-mobility: that whatever is transmitted across locations is always already in motion within its locale. Some performance styles minimize this ‘traffic of the stage,’ while others heighten it – but rare is the theatrical event as static as orthodox critical frameworks (be it object-oriented semiotics, situational identity politics, or textualizing cultural materialism) tend to imply.

We therefore call for papers that address one or, ideally, both of two related modes of transmission:

· The processes by which gestures, techniques, meanings, performance aesthetics and their attendant ideologies pass from practitioner to practitioner in an age of international touring and collaboration.
· The production and experience of movement within in the theatrical event. This may focus specifically on conventions and representations of movement and travel on the stage, or more generally on affect and sensation, on performance as process, motion, movement, and action, or, conversely, on stillness and stasis.

Participants will be expected to write and circulate papers in advance of the conference that will effectively constitute case studies in theatrical transmission. The actual focus of the Working Session will be methodological and conceptual, and address the distinctive analytical challenge of movement and mobility as ‘objects’ of study. The first part of the meeting will be given over to short, prepared responses to the papers by designated group members, paying particular attention to how movement and mobility is figured within the write-up. The second part will build from that, with a view to outlining what might be called a poetics of theatrical movement in an age of globalized cultural flows.

“Transmissions” is a new group, proposed by the conveners as a way of developing work begun in their recently co-edited issue of the journal Performance Research (12: 2, June 2007) on performance and mobility. We feel that the theme has much potential for growth, and will canvas opinions on publication options once the group is established.

Applicants should send proposals of 250 words or less (in Word attachments, with affiliation and full contact information) to Paul Rae at ellrpa@nus.edu.sg by 6th June, 2008. The deadline for full papers will be 30th September.

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12. CFP: ‘The Dancing Place’, Unsettling Theatre: Migration, Map, and Memory, Nov 6-9 2008, Boston, US (due June 6)

The Dancing-Place

Cultural geographer Joël Bonnemaison described the “dancing place” (or yimwayim) as the “centre of space” and the “heart of traditional society” in the island of Tanna, in the Vanuatu archipelago, in the South-Central Pacific (in Culture and Space: Conceiving a New Cultural Geography). The dancing place, he writes, is a “microterritory,” a “founding place” and a “crossroads” representing a “relay node in the chain of relations of alliance.” Villagers identify themselves by their dancing place and “the road to which [they are] linked [to it].” In this working session, questions of place and space, belonging and the structures and symbols of geography, the nodes and nexi of sociocultural belonging, will converge to help us map out the forms defining the place and space of dance, theatre and performance. Where does dancing take place in a given microculture? How does its place inform social hierarchies and political alliances, kinship relations and chains of belonging? What worlds – or what worlds within worlds – are mobilized in the staging, or the mise en scene, of these theatrical and performance or dance events? How does a consideration of the “location of culture” (in Homi K. Bhabha’s terms) help to configure the “placeness” of events considered less as accidental than as essential components of a microculture’s modes of identification and self-identification, territorial belonging and socio-cultural “mapping”? What is the role of centrality or, concomitantly, periphery, in the mapping out of a culture’s “dancing places” – their venues, auditoriums, indoor and outdoor stages, and general visibility “on the ground,” in the social sphere?

Contributions addressing these and attendant questions might consider:
- The geographies and/or politics of space and place in dance and theatre performance
- Cultural lexicons, idioms, tropes
- Territory and territoriality in the acquisition and/or definition of performance venues
- The “placeness” of theatre, dance and performance
- Theatre, dance, performance and cultural geography and geopolitics
- Dance prohibitions, and cultural politics of “underground” theatre and dance
- Central or peripheral stagings, and the politics of mise en scene on contested and on otherwise “charged” terrain

The group will convene over email and wiki in the period preceding the conference, to discuss members’ work. Pre- and post-conference drinks and a show or other outing in Boston TBA. Scholarly and creative contributions are welcome. Please send a 200 word abstract and brief bio to Kélina Gotman at kag2006@columbia.edu no later than Friday, June 6.

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13. CFP: Origins of Dramatic Modernism in England 1870-1914, Book (due June 10)

Academica Press, LLC (Bethesda, MD; Palo Alto, CA; Dublin and Oxford) is pleased to announce a call for essays to be included in an edited collection entitled: Origins of Dramatic Modernism in England, 1870-1914.

The aim of the volume is to examine nascent movements, genre shifts, developing authors, and controversial themes as they emerged in both drama and theatre. We are less interested in the obscure and more concerned with the essence of the creative nexus of London from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century (up to around 1914). Contributors wishing to consider writers after 1914 are invited to do so, but there must be a clear genealogy and analysis of the influences on such writers, keeping in line with the spirit of origins of the volume. We are less interested in essays completely focused on the –isms of the period but more focused on particular authors (individually or grouped) through their representative works. Irish dramatists who fit into the scope of the volume will be considered. We are looking for previously unpublished essays only, from established and beginning scholars world-wide.

We are aware that this specific topic has been treated previously, most notably perhaps by J.L. Styan, Modern Drama in Theory and Practice (3 volumes, 1983) and Christopher Innes, Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century (2002). There is continued interest in modernism, for example in the Modernist Studies Association in America and the Centre for Modernist Studies, Univ. of Sussex, UK; however, drama and theatre feature only marginally in the work of these organizations. We invite prospective authors to revisit these volumes and question the nature of early modernism in the context of drama and theatre with renewed vigor.

As a suggestion, some individual authors to consider (even paired or grouped collectively) might include, again with emphasis on origins and London as a source:

Henry Arthur Jones
Arthur Wing Pinero
William Archer
Janet Achurch
The Independent Theatre
J.T.Grein
George Bernard Shaw
The Incorporated Stage Society
The Court Theatre
Oscar Wilde
Harley Granville Barker
John Vedrenne

Development in the work of
John Galsworthy
Barrie
Yeats
Synge
O’Casey
Maugham
Lonsdale
Priestley
Auden
Isherwood
Eliot

We would request finished essays in MLA style by June 2009. We are looking for good, clear writing on solid authors, extensive use of scholarly resources, and polished essays around 20-25 pages in length.

Proposals (with a very brief biography) or inquiries may be submitted either on paper format or (preferably) by e-mail (with a clear subject line; no attachments please), by 10 June 2008 to both

Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Ph.D.
Professor of Drama
University of Lincoln
Lincoln School of Performing Arts
LPAC Building, Brayford Pool
Lincoln LN6 7TS
UK
dmeyerdinkgrafe@lincoln.ac.uk

and

Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
St. Francis College
180 Remsen Street – Room 6005
Brooklyn Heights, New York 11201 USA
gtague@stfranciscollege.edu

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14. CFP: ‘Orbis Pictus, Theatrum Mundi: World, Picture, Theatre’, German Society for Theatre Studies, October 23-26 2008, U of Amsterdam, the Netherlands (due June 16)

ORBIS PICTUS - THEATRUM MUNDI
World ~ Picture ~ Theatre
Perspectives of the 21st century
Congress Amsterdam 23 - 26 October 2008
9th international congress Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft

Concept and co-ordination: Prof. Dr. Kati Röttger
Theatre Studies Department, University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)20-5254098; Email: k.e.rottger@theatrummundi.com

The conference will focus on the relationship between theatre and world picture across difference historical epochs and cultures. The well-known topoi of Orbis Pictus on the one hand, and Theatrum Mundi on the other form the conceptual frame for questioning this relation. The conference thus invites reflections on ways and spaces of representing the world, knowledge of the world as well as views of the world. The conference is thematically divided into four sections: Paradigm Shifts, Methods, Aesthetics and Politics.

Practical Information

Submission Modalities

We invite submissions of abstracts until 16 June 2008. The Abstract should be focused on one of the four sections the conference foresees (paradigm shifts, methods, aesthetics, politics). The focus should be clearly indicated. Abstracts in either English or German must not exceed 400 words, and should provide a concise outline of the planned conference presentation (maximum 20 minutes). Panels will be organized according to theme as well as language of presentation.

Abstracts can be submitted via the on-line form at: http://www.theatrummundi.com or via e-mail to: abstracts@theatrummundi.com

We specifically invite submissions that include images and audio-visual materials, in addition to the written abstract. Series of images and related texts can be combined into a visual narrative in the form of a horizontal or vertical scroll. For those whose submission has been selected the conference web site will offer a simple on-line tool for making and submitting such scrolls by 1st of July.

In the same manner the selected participants will be invited to add documented quotations to their abstract text, that will facilitate the understanding - by other conference participants - of references in their submitted abstract. These quotations can be more extensive than the usual short academic references. The selected participants will receive a personal log-in for the conference web-site, offering a simple tool to construct such documented quotations. From March 4 onward an example of this way of documentation will be shown in the web version of the call for papers.
The combined abstract, visual narrative and documented quotations will be published on the conference website, so that this may become a textual and visual market place, and communication platform for conference participants. From March 1. onward the website of the Orbis Pictus Theatrum Mundi conference will be on line:

http://www.theatrummundi.com

This will also be the starting day for sending your abstracts and audio-visual materials.

Call for group proposals

We invite proposals by a team of scholars to build their own panel. The panels should fit into one of the four thematic sections of the conference. Each proposal within a panel should be clearly interrelated to the overall panel theme or question.

We also solicit panel ideas, which can be announced on the website, inviting interested participants to join and be involved in the preparation of a specific panel. A panel should consist of a minimum of three speakers in addition to a chair. Each panel is allotted a maximum of 90 minutes. In the event of eight participants for one panel, an additional 90 minutes will be allotted. Panel submissions must include an abstract outlining the structure and thematic focus of the entire panel, in addition to abstracts of each individual paper (maximum 400 words each).

Names and contact details of every panel speaker and chair must be included in the abstract. The panel chair is responsible for ensuring the participation of all speakers in the conference, as well as co-ordinating their registration formalities. Panel proposals can be sent via e-mail to:

panels@theatrummundi.com

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15. CFP: ‘Intermediality and Theatre in Canada’, Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada (due June 30)

With accelerating momentum throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the development of new media technologies has had broad and deep transformative effects upon contemporaneous cultures and ideologies. Specifically, despite early (and enduring) efforts of entrenchment, these evolutionary tensions have thoroughly infiltrated theatrical practice and theory, with profound implications. As artists and theorists explore new integrations of media and performance, they simultaneously question, reinterpret, problematize, and defy existing boundaries between art forms, between media, between “liveness” and recording, and between “presence” and representation.

In Intermediality in Theatre and Performance (2006), Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt define intermediality as “a powerful and potentially radical force, which operates in-between performer and audience; in-between theatre, performance and other media; and in-between realities […] In addition, intermediality is positioned in-between several conceptual frameworks and artistic/philosophical movements.” The effects of intermediality, they contend, include “new modes of representation; new dramaturgical strategies; new ways of structuring and staging words, images and sounds; new ways of positioning bodies in time and space; new ways of creating temporal and spatial interrelations” (11-12). In addition to these formal and conceptual characteristics, however—perhaps even more definitively—intermediality may be understood as a cultural and ideological positioning and basis for strategy. According to Klaus-Peter Busse, “intermedia is not performance, but performative action” (Intermedia: Enacting the Liminal [2005] 264).

This issue of TRiC / RtaC proposes to investigate the “radical force” and “performative action” of theatrical intermediality in Canada, through the investigation of a wide range of forms, territories, strategies, and motivations.

Possible topics:
- The reinterpretation of boundaries: mixed media, multimedia, crossover and hybrid performances, “live” performance in virtual space and virtual performance in “live” space
- Remediations: explorations of the ways recent media remediate earlier media (i.e. filmic remediation of theatre; televisual remediation of radio, theatre, and film; digital remediation of print, photograph, television, etc.)
- Intermedial dramaturg(ies)
- Spatial and temporal representation and interrelationships
- Intemedial bodies in performance
- Perception, memory, and/or consciousness in intermedial performance
- Intercultural Intermedia
- Intermedial audiences
- Online theatre and performance
- Training models for intermedial performance
- Intermedial theatre criticism and education

All articles will be peer-reviewed, and should follow the submission guidelines for TRiC/RTaC. Please carefully review the guidelines printed in the current issue and available at: http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/TRIC/subguide.html

Articles are usually no longer than 5,000 words. We also encourage the submission of visual materials (photos, illustrations, plans, etc.), “Forum” section items (see submission guidelines on the TRIC website for criteria), and titles for appropriate book review items.
Papers should be sent to the addresses given below. Submissions can be sent by email or regular post; in either case, please send to both addresses.

Please forward a statement of intention by 30 June 2008 to:

Bruce Kirkley
Theatre Department
University of the Fraser Valley
45635 Yale Road
Chilliwack BC V2P 6T4
bruce.kirkley@ucfv.ca

OR

T Bruce Barton
Graduate Centre for Study of Drama
University of Toronto
214 College Street, 3rd Floor
Toronto, ON M5T 2Z9
bruce.barton@utoronto.ca
The deadline for the submission of papers is 1 September 2008.

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16. CFP: ‘Crossing Borders’, Puppetry International, Fall/Winter 2008 (due July 1)

A publication of UNIMA-USA.

Our upcoming issue, “Crossing Borders,” will focus on how foreign travels shape puppetry and puppeteers. We are especially interested in articles that explore the experiences of U.S. puppet artists who go abroad to work or study. How does a foreign culture influence aesthetics, work habits, and self-image? How does the puppeteer’s own work and world-view affect his or her hosts, co-workers, or students? We also seek articles that explore related topics: the experience of international puppeteers in the U.S.; the challenges of crossing borders, obtaining visas and finding work in an age of heightened security; and the artistic effects of the current global status of the United States. Our focus is not simply on projects and performances that are the result of international collaborations, but rather on how the global experience furthers the mission of UNIMA-USA (international friendship and understanding through the art of puppetry). Accounts of experiences at international festivals may be appropriate, although we are not looking for reviews of specific performances at those festivals.

Have other ideas? We love to be surprised—send proposals to Andrew Periale:

ab2periale@metrocast.net

We generally publish one peer-reviewed article per issue. If you would like an article to be considered for peer review please send it to:

john.bell.puppeteer@gmail.com

Deadlines:

regular articles: August 1, 2008
for peer review: July 1, 2008
2000 words max.

Please send as MS Word attachment (.rtf or .doc), with brief cover letter describing article and including your address and email. Use of images is strongly encouraged; send images large enough for printing (minimum 300 dpi at print size) in jpeg format.

There is currently no honorarium for writers, though we will send two copies of the issue to authors (one for overseas or for book reviews). Authors retain copyright of their own work.

Puppetry International is intended for readers with a serious interest in theatre and art. Although we publish scholarship, we are not primarily a scholarly journal. Anything more than a few endnotes or limited bibliography (MLA format, please) is likely to be posted on our website. We also use our website to publish longer versions of articles that appear in our print journal.

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17. CFP: 12th Annual Conference on Holidays, Rituals, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display, Sept 25-27 2008, Bowling Green State U, US (due Aug 1)

CELEBRATING the 100th anniversary of the publication of Les Rites des Passage, by Arnold Van Gennep!

Announcing the 12th multidisciplinary Conference on Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display, at Bowling Green State University. The conference will be held on Sept 25-27, Bowling Green State University.

Presentations should involve original research and be analytical or theoretical in nature. All topics within the general scope of the conference will be considered. Papers may be on any topic within the broad categories of ritual, festival, and celebration, and we especially welcome topics relating to rites of passage.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS August 1, 2008

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS AND MEDIA PRESENTATIONS: Send three copies of a
one-page vita and a proposal that includes your name, department/program, institution, mailing and e-mail addresses, telephone and FAX numbers, title of paper, and 300-word abstract.

FOR PANELS: Send three copies of a one-page vita for each participant; a 150-word abstract of the session's theme including the title of the session; a 300-word abstract for each participant including their name, department/program, institution, mailing and e-mail addresses, telephone and FAX numbers, and title of paper; contact data for the session coordinator (please include home and office telephone numbers and preferred mailing address and e-mail addresses, especially if different from institutional addresses).

AUDIO-VISUAL REQUIREMENTS: Please specify your audio-visual equipment
needs within the proposal.

SEND 3 COPIES OF YOUR PROPOSAL TO: Jack Santino, Department of Popular
Culture, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403-0226.
FAX: (419) 372-2577, E-mail: jacksantino@hotmail.com

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18. CFP: ‘Film and Science: Documentaries and Beyond’, Film and History Conference, Oct 30-Nov 2, Chicago, US (due Aug 1)

How broad-reaching and inclusive is your conception of science? For Film & History, it can span from animation to race, and from pedagogy to virtual reality, with stops in between for extraterrestrials, explorers, icons and mad scientists.

In the hope of sparking your imaginations for presentations, workshops, and papers, the following is a list of our current and shortly forthcoming areas for Film & History's upcoming conference, "Film and Science: Fictions, Documentaries and Beyond" (Chicago, 10/30-11/2/08). We are now entering the 3rd Round Call for Papers, and the revised deadline for all areas is August 1, 2008.

For additional information on any of the areas, please consult our website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory), and click on the "Areas and Contact Information" link on the front page. Each area title is a link that will open a new Word document file with a full call for papers.

* Adaptations
* Animals
* The Atomic Age
* Atomics, Animation, and Anticipation
* The Apollo Program
* Bioethics
* Cinematic Extraterrestrials
* Code-breaking: Low and High-Tech Whodunnits
* Comparisons in Non-Fiction Science Films and Television
* Corporate, Educational, and Industrial Films
* Darwin and the Evolution-Intelligent Design Aftermath
* David Cronenberg
* Different Bodies: Disability, Impairment, and Illness
* Doctor Who
* Environmental Documentaries
* Explorers and Exploration
* The Future of Genocide and Repression
* German Science Fiction Films
* Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings
* Hollywood's Physicians
* The Intrusion of Technology
* Is Resistance Really Futile?
* Military Science
* Monsters, Mad Scientists, and Men From Outer Space
* Pedagogy-Methodology
* Race and Science Fiction Film
* Reenactments
* Science Fiction in British Film and Television
* Science Fiction from Literature to the Screen
* The Science of the Kill
* The Science of Special Effects
* Time Travel
* Scientific Icons
* Shakespeare and Technology
* Sportive Performance
* Steven Spielberg
* Surveillance and Control
* Virtual Reality and Gaming
* Women in the Sciences

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19. CFP: Beckett and Music Symposium, Nov 7 2008, U of Sussex, UK (due Aug 30)

An interdisciplinary symposium organised by the Department of Music and the Department of English and Drama, University of Sussex.
Friday November 7 2008

Samuel Beckett had a deep fascination with music. Several of his works incorporate canonical musical texts: Schubert's string quartet "Death and the Maiden" in All That Fall; the same composer's Lied "Nacht und Träume" in the TV drama the same name; Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio (op. 70) in the TV drama The Ghost Trio. In two of his radio plays, Words and Music and Cascando, Beckett engages directly with the problematic of music and language, and he supplied a text for the American composer Morton Feldman's opera Neither. Beckett was also interested in the philosophical aesthetics of music, in particular the writings of Schopenhauer, and critics have often noted the "musicality" of his approach to writing and theatrical composition. Beckett's works have also inspired many composers, including Luciano Berio, Geörgy Kurtág, Philip Glass, Heinz Holliger, Michael Finnissy, Roger Marsh and Richard Barrett.

This symposium will provide an opportunity to review work that has been undertaken on Beckett and music since the publication the 1998 collection of essays Samuel Beckett and Music edited by Mary Bryden (OUP), and to extend that conversation to consider the ways in which Beckett's engagement with music is conveyed across a range of practices and disciplines.

The symposium will also include a staged performance of Stefano Gervasoni's short music theatre piece based on Beckett's text "Pas si" (1998, revised 2008), and performances of other Beckett-inspired musical works.

Proposals for papers or presentations should be submitted as abstracts of no more than 300 words to n.till@sussex.ac.uk by August 30 2008.

We would also welcome any proposals for performative, musical or sound works inspired by Beckett, or based on Beckett texts.

Conference Organisers: Sara Jane Bailes and Peter Boxall, Department of English and Drama, Nicholas Till, Department of Music.

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20. CFP: ‘Global Perspectives on Dance Pedagogy: Research and Practice,’ CORD / CEPA / DMU Conference, June 26-27 2009, De Montfort U, UK (due Sept 1)

The Conference Programme Committee invites proposals for individual papers, panels, lecture-demonstrations and workshops on dance pedagogy. We warmly welcome contributions from researchers, scholars, teachers, dancers, writers and all who are interested in dance from around the world. Please join us to discuss and debate global perspectives in the research and practice of dance pedagogy.

Conference Programme Committee
Michael Huxley (Chair) De Montfort University
Alexandra Carter, Middlesex University
Ann Dils, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Editor Dance Research Journal
Martin Hargreaves, Laban, Editor Dance Theatre Journal
Jayne Stevens, De Montfort University

CORD / CEPA Special Conference Themes:
Global dance pedagogies—learning from each other
Critical issues in dance education and training
Practice as research—implications for learning and teaching
Dance pedagogy and new media—new practices, new theories
Researching the histories of dance practice and pedagogy
Pedagogy and interdisciplinarity
Dance pedagogy as a locus for theory and practice

This peer-reviewed conference celebrates the growing interest in the relationship between dance research and dance pedagogy in all its forms. Over the last few years there has been a considerable development in the learning and teaching of dance. Much of this development has been based on an expanding research base. This has included a substantial contribution in the form of practice as research. This conference aims to bring together an international constituency to identify cutting edge research in the area as a basis for future development. A global perspective is especially important in the recognition of the range of discourses now available.

The conference invites participants to consider the following questions:
- What are the most productive relationships between research and pedagogy?
- What are the critical issues in dance education and training
- What is the cutting edge research that will define future dance pedagogy?
- How can interdisciplinarity inform dance pedagogy?
- How can different discourses on pedagogy from different cultures inform each other?
- How can we get beyond dualism and binaries when considering theory and practice?
- What implications does practice as research have for pedagogy?
- What opportunities are offered by the use of new media and its associated technologies?

We invite proposals for papers, panels, lecture-demonstrations and workshops.

CORD / CEPA Special Conference Proposal Deadline:
All proposals must be received by September 1st, 2008.
For complete submission guidelines and forms see the conference websites at DMU:
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/humanities/cepa

or at CORD: http://www.cordance.org

Details
Individual Papers should not exceed 20 minutes for presentation. (There will be an additional 10 minutes for questions, comments, and responses.) Submit a 500 word abstract of the paper including its argument and a statement of method plus a brief bibliography.

Panels consisting of three individual presenters may be proposed. Submit a 250 word description of the panel in addition to the individual paper proposals—as described above—for each presenter. Please send all panel proposal documents together.

Lecture-Demonstrations or Workshops may run from 30-45 minutes. Submit a 500 word abstract describing the topic and organization of the session. Also, clearly state the requirements for space, time, audio-visual equipment, and/or appropriate attire for participants.

For all Proposals
A submission form must accompany all proposals. (See website for downloadable submission form.) Do not include the name of the author(s) within the abstract’s text.
Proposals sent via e-mail are preferred. If submitting by e-mail, please download the submission form from the conference website and send your proposal as a Word document to: cepa@dmu.ac.uk

Please include your last name and CORD/CEPA 2009 in the Subject Heading of the e-mail. The text should be attached and pasted in the body of the e-mail to assure access. Faxes will not be accepted. If submitting by regular mail, please send six copies of proposal and submission form to: Michael Huxley, CEPA/CORD 2009 Conference Chair, Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH. UK.

All proposals will be blind reviewed by the Programme Committee with the following criteria in mind:

1. relationship to the conference theme

2. the paper’s or panel’s contribution to a deeper understanding of issues of scholarship and practice in dance, or in other related fields.

Receipt of all submissions will be confirmed electronically.

Notification of acceptance will be in December 2008.
Queries about proposals may be addressed by e-mail to Michael Huxley at mrhuxley@dmu.ac.uk
Queries about the Conference should be addressed to lbarnsley@dmu.ac.uk
Information about De Montfort University and Leicester can be found at www.dmu.ac.uk

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21. CFP: ‘Historicizing Memory / Remembering History’, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Feb 26-March 1 2009, Boston, US (due Sept 15)

This panel seeks to investigate the relationship between history and memory in modern and contemporary American literature. Does memory constitute history or counterbalance it? How does memory affect both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative? What is social or collective memory? How can the literature of memory help narrate histories that otherwise resist representation? Theoretical and cross-disciplinary work will be
particularly welcomed, as will work focusing on how particular literary modes of representing history and/or memory serve to construct or deconstruct national and communal allegiances and identifications.

Possible issues to address may include the following:

*Writing and remembering lives in autobiographical or biographical texts
*Authority and archives
*Historical fiction / historiographic metafiction
*Political, ethical, and legal implications of historical fiction
*False histories / faux autobiographies
*Problems of epistemology and temporality in writing history and/or memory
*The rise of the memoir
*Memory / mourning / memorializing
*Forgetting / disavowed histories
*Representations of specific historical events
*Literature after history (Fukuyama)
*Oral histories
*Literature and cultural memory / collective history
*Memory and colonialism / post-colonialism
*Trauma and testimony
*Alternative historical narratives
*Postmemory (Hirsch)

Abstracts of 500 words should be emailed no later than September 15,
2008 to Lisa Hinrichsen at lhinrich@bu.edu (before August 1) or to lhinrich@gmail.com
(after August 1). Questions or queries are welcomed before the deadline.

Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any)

For the complete Call for Papers for the 2009 Convention (posted in June), please visit www.nemla.org. Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA panel; however, panelists can only present one paper. Convention participants may present at a paper session panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

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22. CFP: Traditions and Transformations: Tourism, Heritage and Cultural Change in the Middle East and North Africa Region, April 4-7 2009, Amman, Jordan (due Sept 30)

Tourism is a well established phenomenon across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region and despite political instabilities it demonstrates remarkable resilience. As well as being a major economic force and a key driver for development, tourism is also an important mechanism for social exchange and identity building at both the individual and regional/national levels. Over recent years the rate of tourism development has increased substantively. Multi-national investments in hotels, resort complexes and infrastructure, together with major heritage conservation projects are catalysing significant social changes (such as shifting patterns of labour migration and the testing of ‘traditional’ values and practices), environmental changes (at the aesthetic level and in terms of physical change), and political changes (re-orientation of alliances and new globalised relationships).

The aims of this major international and multi-disciplinary conference are: To critically explore the major issues facing the MENA region with regard to the development of tourism and its relationships with heritage and culture; To draw upon ideas, cases and best practice from international scholars and help develop new understandings and research capacities regarding the relationships between tourism, heritage and culture in the MENA Region and; To provide a major networking opportunity for international scholars, policy makers and professionals.

CALL FOR PAPERS

In this major conference we seek to examine the phenomenon of tourism across the Middle East and North Africa Region and its changing relationships with heritage and culture. We wish to promote dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and thus we welcome papers from the following disciplines: anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art and design history, cultural geography, cultural studies, ethnology and folklore, history, heritage studies, landscape studies, linguistics, museum studies, political science, sociology, tourism studies and urban/spatial planning.

Key themes of interest to the conference include:

· Histories, mobilities, and the symbolic / political economies of tourism
· Tourism in the construction of places / spaces / nations
· The role of archaeology in contemporary tourism
· Structures / infrastructures of international tourism – building/ architecture/ design for tourism & tourists
· Tourism and the role of the museum
· The conservation of heritage for tourism
· The practices and performances of ‘tradition’
· Tourist art and art for tourists
· Intangible heritage and its role in tourism
· Rural and urban tourism practices

Please submit a 300 word abstract including title and full contact details as an electronic file to Prof Mike Robinson (ctcc@leedsmet.ac.uk). You may submit your abstract as soon as possible but no later than 30th September 2008.

Conference Organisers: Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, and the Council for British Research in the Levant, Amman, Jordan.

For further details on the conference please visit: www.tourism-culture.com or www.cbrl.org.uk or contact us at:
phone +44 (0) 113- 2838541 or email ctcc@leedsmet.ac.uk

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23. CFP: Symposium on Theatre and Cognitive Studies, Feb 27-28 2009, U of Pittsburgh, US (due Oct 1)

Plenary Speaker:
Mark Johnson, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon
³Cognition and the Arts²

The University of Pittsburgh¹s Symposium on Theatre and Cognitive Studies will feature new work at the intersection of theatre/performance studies and the studies of the mind and brain. We encourage paper proposals from theatre and performance scholars working in the fields of acting, spectatorship, directing, design, playwriting, and theatricality. We also encourage proposals from cognitive literary critics with an interest in drama, including script analysis and dramaturgy.

Topics presented may include (but are not limited to) conceptual integration (³blending²), Theory of Mind, empathy studies, affordances, emotions, memory, and cognition as these relate to the history, theory, and practice of the theatre. Final papers should be twenty minutes long.

Mark Johnson is the Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago, 1987) and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago, 2007). He is co-author with George Lakoff of the highly influential Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, 1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (Basic Books, 1999). In keeping with recent emphases on "cognitive embodiment," Johnson researches the way in which meaning and cognition are intimately tied to embodied epistemology and what he calls "the pervasive aesthetic characteristics of all experience" (2007).

Symposium Organizers: Bruce McConachie, University of Pittsburgh; Rhonda Blair, Southern Methodist University; F. Elizabeth Hart, University of Connecticut; Pil Hansen, University of Toronto; John Lutterbie, SUNY Stony Brook; and Amy Cook, Indiana University.

Send 200-300 word proposals to Pil Hansen and John Lutterbie by emails only: Hansen.pil@gmail.com and John.Lutterbie@gmail.com

Deadline for all proposals: October 1, 2008

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24. CFP: Politics and Culture: An International Review of Books (due Oct1)

http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture/

Politics and Culture is a free, on-line journal edited by Amitava Kumar and Michael Ryan. Its winter edition will focus on European contributions to Cultural Studies in the widest possible sense. Both notions ("Europe" and "Cultural Studies") are used in a non-restrictive and open way, guaranteeing a diversity of approaches and geographies. The editorial team for this edition consists of Joke Bauwens (VuBrussels), Nico Carpentier (VuBrussels), Peter Csigo (Hungarian Academy of Science), Tanja Thomas (ULueneburg), Sofie Van Bauwel (UGhent) and Fabian Virchow (UMarburg / Paris-Lodron-University).

Both book reviews and short 2000-word essays are welcomed for the winter edition of Politics and Culture. Potential authors who wish express their interest in publishing a book review or short essay are requested to contact Nico Carpentier as soon as possible at <nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be>. Proposals for book reviews need to include the name of the author, the book(s) to be reviewed, and the estimated length. Proposals for short essays need to include a 100-word abstract.

All book reviews and essays will need to be send to the editorial team (for review) by ultimately October 1, 2008, and final versions of the texts will have to be ready on November 1, 2008.

Nico Carpentier (PhD)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels – Belgium

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25. CFP: Education in Global Contexts, July 27-29 2009, Queen’s U, Canada (due Oct 1)

Please find below first information and call for papers for the "INTER 2009" conference on international undergraduate education to be hosted by Queen's University (Canada) International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, 27-29 July 2009.

Herstmonceux Castle was presented to Queen's University by Dr. Alfred Bader in 1993 with a vision for an international centre where students and scholars could meet as global citizens. Please go to http://www.queensu.ca/isc for further details of the ISC.

The ISC is now part of Queen's University, Kingston, Canada hosting students from Queen's and partner universities for 1 or more semesters of residential study in humanities, arts and sciences. The international dimension is clearly a key aspect of their studies and experience, and the pedagogical-pastoral issues thus raised are intended to be at the heart of the conference.

The conference will explore all aspects of international, liberal undergraduate education: philosophies, programmes, best practices, academic and operational structures, histories and aspirations in a global educational environment.
Planning is still in the early stages; in the meanwhile please contact the Executive Director, Dr. David Bevan <d_bevan@isc.queensu.ac.uk> to whom proposals should be sent by 01 October 2008.

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26. CFP: ‘Global Dramatic Theories’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Spring 2009 (due Oct 14)

The field of performance studies, with its receptivity to non-Western practices and general inclination towards experimental forms, has now inspired several generations of scholarship on how performance practices travel across cultural and political borders. However, the global migration of theatre and performance is also evident within the reception and production of theory itself. One need only think of the extraordinary travels of Aristotle’s Poetics through ancient and early modern Europe and Arabia and of the Sanskrit Natyasastra through pre-modern Asia to recognize the role syncretism (synthesis of disparate cultural elements) and “glocality” (interpenetration of global and local) has played in the history of dramatic theory. While some recent anthologizers (e.g. Sidnell, Brandt) still present dramatic theory as a strictly European discourse, others (e.g. Gerould, Bial) modestly hint at global or glocal frameworks. A handful of major theories (Soyinka, Thiong’o, Boal) have circulated widely, and a growing body of studies (e.g. Balme, Fei, Dharwadker) recognizes theory itself as a fundamental site of glocal negotiation.

For this special section of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, we invite essays of 20-25 manuscript pages, exclusive of notes, examining writings produced within glocal or syncretic contexts outside Europe and the United States. These theories may be recent or historical, and need not necessarily be produced within an explicitly theoretical discourse (e.g. theoretical formulations produced within religious, literary, philosophical or other discourses). They may have been shaped through reception of Euro-American dramatic theory, e.g., local versions of Western dramatic aesthetics. They may attempt to recover or modernize pre-colonial aesthetics, or make radical statements seeking to move beyond both Western and local traditions. We seek articulations and treatments of articulations that take the form of theory, rather than of performance, whose intent is to lay out paths for future practice or new understandings of prior models.

Areas of possible concern might include:
• how difference is articulated, and how locality is framed within theory
• the form and desirability of a new “national” drama vis-à-vis other identity claims
• articulation of sub-national particularities through drama
• claims to universality, globality or sameness as distinct from locality
• relation to (local or imported) notions of historicity, periodicity and aesthetic or cultural development
• attempts to reconcile contradictory signifying frameworks

Inquiries may be directed to guest editor Evan Winet at evanwinet@gmail.com. To submit a manuscript, please send an electronic copy as a Word attachment (including mailing address, email, and phone number in cover message). Manuscripts may also be sent (with personal information indicated above) by mail to:

Evan Darwin Winet, Guest Editor
c/o Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
Department of English
The University of Kansas
Wescoe Hall, Room 3107
1445 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence, KS 66045
evanwinet@gmail.com

All manuscripts must be received by October 15, 2008 to receive full consideration.

Jocelyn L. Buckner
Managing Editor, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
Department of Theatre and Film
University of Kansas
jbuckner@ku.edu, jdtc@ku.edu

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27. CFP: ‘Islands of Memory: Navigating Personal and Public History,’ Oral History Association of Australia National Conference, Sept 17-20 2009, Launceston, Australia (due Oct 31)

The Tasmanian Branch of the Oral History Association of Australia invites proposals for presentations on the theme:

Islands of Memory: Navigating Personal and Public History
Sub-themes include:
navigating truth and memory
navigating through generations
navigating new technologies

We encourage proposals from people who have worked with oral history in a wide range of environments such as family history and community projects, museums, heritage agencies, academic institutions, radio and television, law courts and performing arts.

Proposals (maximum 200 words) are invited for individual papers, thematic panels, workshops and performances.

CLOSING DATE FOR PROPOSALS: 31 OCTOBER 2008

Proposals should be sent to:
Jill Cassidy
President OHAA (Tas) Inc
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
PO Box 403
Launceston Tasmania Australia 7250
Jill.Cassidy@qvmag.tas.gov.au

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28. CFP: ‘Topographies: Sites, Bodies, and Technologies’, Society of Dance History Scholars Annual Conference, June 19-22 2009, Stanford and San Francisco, US (due Nov 1)

"Topography" derives from the 15th century Middle English "topographie," or Late Latin "topographia," a description of a place, from "topographein" to describe a place, from "topos" place + graphein "to write" or "to carve."

The art or practice of graphic delineation in detail usually on maps or charts of natural and built features of a place or region especially in a way to show their relative positions and elevations.

The schema of a structural entity, as of the mind, a field of study, or society, reflecting a division into distinct areas having a specific relation or a specific position relative to one another.
terrain, geographical features, topography

The Society of Dance History Scholars invites submissions for its 2009 conference, "Topographies: Sites, Bodies, and Technologies" to be held at Stanford University and venues in the San Francisco Bay Area, June 19-22, 2009. SDHS welcomes scholars and artists from across the globe to join us in moving through both historical and present "topographies" of dance. What happens when the place and space of bodies becomes an organizing discourse for dance making and research?

Topographies enforce and re-inscribe the boundaries of our lives and our planet, but only for a moment because space shifts, sites move, bodies drift, codes slip, and time vanishes. In a topographic map, what goes un-measured? Can we imagine different, even fantastic geographies of movement and exchange? If new algorithms are undoing and redoing both the known and the unknown of sites and bodies, how could dance inform this volatile topography of motion? We invite you to join us in a physical encounter with sites and
bodies as sites in motion and transformation.

The following are possible areas of focus that will mark and organize our gathering.We hope they encourage new ways of thinking and encountering bodily knowledges. Proposals on all areas of dance and body-based performance research are welcome and encouraged.

Corporeal Mappings

Site-Specificity and Site-Specific Works

Choreographing Technologies

Choreography in Local and Transnational Sites

Surveying History

This conference will continue to explore new formats for presentations, performance / presentations, and open dialogues. We will continue the between-session-interludes, which encouraged informal encounters across disciplines, theories and practices.

Other Topographies: Out-of-Site
To extend our artist/scholar dialogues, we will hold one day of presentations, roundtables, and performances at particular venues in the Bay Area, such as the ODC Dance Commons, Counterpulse, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We will move our conferencing through the topographies that mark the dance of the northern California bay and coastal
regions. We would like to extend special thanks to Mrs. Alfred S. Wilsey for supporting the 2009 SDHS Conference.

Proposal Formats
We encourage proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables. We will also consider alternate formats such as seminars, topic-specific research groups, reading groups, forums, workshops dance inventions or interventions, demonstrations, or formats you may propose that rethink the standard conventions for presenting both scholarship and choreography. We stress the involvement of the dance community and all participants in the infrastructure of the creation and staging of dances. We invite artists and scholar/artists to make works-in-progress that we could encounter together; We invite engineers, scientists, and media artists to join us and present on their work in new media and technologies of motion. Interdisciplinary artists and researchers who experiment with motion, design, and/or corporeal studies are welcome to submit panels, papers, and roundtables. We hope to also have screenings of dance on film and experimental dance media works.

Topographies Committee Members
The conference committee consists of Sherril Dodds, University of Surrey, UK, Carrie Gaiser, U of California Berkeley, Anthea Kraut, U California Riverside, Katherine Mezur, U of Washington (chair), and Jacqueline Shea Murphy. The Topographies program and curation committee includes Anne Fiskvik, University of Trondheim, Cindy Garcia, University of Minnesota; Anita Gonzalez, State University of New York, New Paltz; Sara Rubidge, University of Chichester; Priya Srinivasan, U of California Riverside; Arden Thomas, Stanford University; Yutian Wong, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All committee members will review the proposals.

Please note the deadline for proposals is November 1, 2008. Proposal forms and submission details are on our website at www.sdhs.org. Address all conference
proposal questions to Katherine Mezur , kmezur@sbcglobal.net. We look forward to meeting you in 2009 in California.

Graduate Awards and Grants for 2009
In recognition of Selma Jeanne Cohen's great contributions to dance history, the Society of Dance History Scholars inaugurated an award in her name at its 1995 conference. The Selma Jeanne Cohen Award aims to encourage graduate student members of SDHS by recognizing excellence in dance scholarship. Up to three awards will be offered at each conference. Each award includes an invitation to present a paper at the annual conference, waiver of the registration fee for that conference, and a grant to help defray costs of attending the conference. Awards are based on the originality of the research, the rigor of the argument, and the clarity of the writing.

Papers submitted in competition for a Selma Jeanne Cohen Award must be based on unpublished research or interpretation and must be designed for oral delivery within twenty minutes, including use of audiovisual aids. (Papers running eight double-spaced pages are
ideal.)

Students interested in applying for the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award should follow the regular guidelines for conference submission and check the appropriate box on the submission form. If proposals are accepted by the program committee, a full-text version of the paper
will be due by 15 March 2009 at the SDHS Office. The full-text version should be sent via email to sdhs@primemanagement.net.

The Society of Dance History Scholars offers Graduate Student Travel Grants, aimed at encouraging broad graduate student participation in its annual conference. Each year three grants will be made to graduate students to help defray the costs of attending the annual conference. Applications for the next round of Graduate Student Travel Grants are due at the SDHS office by 15 March 2009. Please download the application form from www.sdhs.org. Although postal submissions may be sent to the SDHS office at

3416 Primm Lane, Birmingham AL 35216, email submissions to sdhs@primemanagement.net are strongly encouraged.

Any student member of SDHS enrolled in a graduate degree program and engaged in dance research is eligible. Students need not have a paper accepted for presentation at the conference in order to apply. Although applications from students presenting papers are encouraged, applications from students interested in attending a Working Group or simply listening and learning also are welcome. In all cases, applicants must persuade the evaluation committee that attending the conference will further their research. There is no presumption that presenting, participating in a Working Group, or simply attending is the most grant-worthy application. Individuals are eligible to receive a Graduate Student Travel Grant only once during their graduate career. Although student members of SDHS may apply for the Travel Grant and the Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize or Gertrude Lippincott Prize in the same year, they may not accept both a travel grant and a prize in the same year. Applicants must be current (paid-up) members of SDHS at the time of applying for the Graduate Student Travel Grant. Contact the SDHS accounts manager at sdhs@primemanagement.net to verify membership status.

For additional information on these grants and other awards, consult the SDHS website at www.sdhs.org.

Katherine Mezur
Assistant Professor
School of Drama
101 Hutchinson Hall Box 353950
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3950
kmezur@u.washington.edu

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29. CFP: ‘The Technologisation of Bodies and Selves,’ Fifth International Somatechnics Conference, April 16-18 2009, Macquarie U, Sydney, Australia (due Nov 30)

Abstracts are invited for an international conference to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 16th-18th 2009. Abstracts should be 300-500 words and should be forwarded to A/Prof Nikki Sullivan and Ms Jess Cadwallader at the addresses listed below. Proposals for panels and for performance pieces are welcome.

“Somatechnics” is a recently coined term used to highlight the inextricability of soma and techné, of the body (as a culturally intelligible construct) and the techniques (dispositifs and ‘hard technologies’) in and through which bodies are formed and transformed. This term, then, supplants the logic of the ‘and’, indicating that technés are not something we add to or apply to the body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies are constituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects contemporary understandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization of historically and culturally specific discourses and practices.

Possible topics:
Somatechnologies of the self (‘non-mainstream’ body modification, body sculpting, performance, fashion, drug use, ‘self-mutilation’, religious practice, etc)
medical somatechnologies (cosmetic, reproductive, imaging, corrective, sex (re)assignment, implantation, enhancement, bio-techs, public health initiatives, etc)
somatechnics of law
somatechnologies of gender, sexuality, race, class, etc
somatechnologies of normalcy and pathology
somatechnics of war
somatechnologies of the post-human (cyborgs, nanotechnology, virtuality, etc)
soma-ethics

Deadline for abstracts: November 30th 2007

Keynote Speakers include:
Claudia Castaneda (Brandeis University)
Nichola Rumsey (University of the West of England)
Jennifer Terry (University of California, Irvine)

Further information:
The Somatechnics Conference Committee
Somatechnics Research Centre
Division of Society, Media, Culture and Philosophy
Macquarie University
North Ryde
New South Wales 2109
Australia

Email: nikki.sullivan@scmp.mq.edu.au or somatechnicsadmin@gmail.com
Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 8760

Somatechnics Research Centre Website: http://www.somatechnics.mq.edu.au

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30. CFP: Being, Becoming and Belonging: Multiculturalism, Diversity and Inclusion in Modern Canada, March 28-30 2009, St Anne’s College, U of Oxford, UK (due Nov 30)

The British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS) is pleased to announce that the 2009 annual conference will take place on 28–30 March 2009. Proposals for 20-minute papers, to be presented in either English or French, are invited from any single disciplinary or multidisciplinary perspective. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary panel proposals, including those from postgraduate students, are also welcome.
Canada is renowned for “incorpora[ting] an embrace of diversity into their national mythologies” (Kernerman, 2005). This conference will consider a breadth of subjects in relation to the construction, evolution, evaluation and representation of modern Canada and its appreciation and recognition of matters of cultural difference. Papers are welcomed from any disciplinary approach and include those which offer an informed view of Canada in comparative context.

Papers will be especially appreciated in the following areas:

• multiculturalism, citizenship, policy, management
• law, human rights, constitution, freedom
• societies, integration/disintegration, inclusion/exclusion
• diversity, ethnicity, tolerance
• cultures and literatures
• representation, identity, self, history, meaning and recognition
• well being, the local and the global
• metropolis, cities, towns and ruralis
Enquiries and proposals to:
Jodie Robson, BACS Administrator
31 Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9HA
Tel: 44 (0) 20 7862 8687 / 44 (0) 1289 387331
Email: jodie.robson@canadian-studies.net

Proposals (panel and individual) and deadline:

Email abstract(s) of 200-300 words; and brief CV(s) (must include title(s), institutional affiliation(s) and address(es) by 30 November 2008. Submissions will be acknowledged by email.

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31. CFP: General Call, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (no date)

paradigm . . . n. . . . 1 a) a pattern, example, or model b) an overall concept accepted by most people in an intellectual community, as a science, because of its effectiveness in explaining a complex process, idea, or set of data 2 Gram. an example of a declension or conjugation, giving all the inflectional forms of a word---SYN. model.

praxis . . . n. . . . 1 practice, as distinguished from theory, of an art, science, etc. 2 established practice, custom 3 [Now Rare] a set of examples or exercises, as in grammar

field . . . n. . . . 1 a wide stretch of open land; plain; 2 a piece of cleared land, set off or enclosed . . . 6 a battlefield . . . 10 the background, as on a flag or coin . . . –vt. Baseball, cricket a) to stop or catch or to catch and throw (a ball) in play b) to put (a player) into a field position 2 [Colloq.] to answer (a question) extemporaneously.

The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism seeks articles of three types for future issues:
1. essays of 20-25 manuscript pages, exclusive of notes, addressing paradigms used in or potentially useful for dramatic theory and criticism, broadly conceived;
2. essays of 15-25 manuscript pages, exclusive of notes, investigating praxis, such as theatre practices that raise questions about the nature of theatre, drama, or performance;
3. shorter essays, interviews, or dialogues reflecting on the field by examining a body of work by an individual author or a recent theoretical or critical trend.

Submissions will be accepted on an ongoing basis. Inquiries may be directed to the managing editor at jdtc@ku.edu. To submit a manuscript, please send an electronic copy as a Word attachment (including a cover page with name, address, e-mail, and phone number). Manuscripts may also be sent (with personal information indicated above on a separate page) by mail to:

Iris Smith Fischer, Editor
The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
University of Kansas
Department of English
1445 Jayhawk Boulevard, Room 3001
Lawrence, Kansas 66045

Jocelyn L. Buckner
Managing Editor, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
Department of Theatre and Film
University of Kansas
jbuckner@ku.edu, jdtc@ku.edu

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32. CFP: General Call, International Journal of Intangible Heritage (no date)

Theme: All possible discourses on Intangible Heritage

The International Journal of Intangible Heritage is a refereed academic and professional journal for the cultural and heritage sectors. First published in May 2006, the Journal embraces theory and practice in relation to the study, preservation, interpretation and promotion of intangible heritage. In recent years, academics, researchers and professionals in many different parts of the cultural and heritage sectors have increasingly been collecting, systematising, documenting and communicating intangible heritage and in particular supporting both its traditional and contemporary expressions.

The need for such an international publication was one of the significant outcomes of the 2004 Triennial General Conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, on the theme `Museums and Intangible Heritage`. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Republic of Korea agreed to provided support for this Journal through the National Folk Museum of Korea. Following the establishment of the Journal Secretariat in the Museum and the convening of an International Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory Committee in late 2005, the Volume One was published in May 2006; Volume Two in May 2007 and Volume Three is due to come out in May 2008. The printed editions are supplemented by an electronic edition in PDF format at http://www.ijih.org .

Papers submitted by the end of October each year are refereed and considered by the Editorial Board at its Annual Meeting in January-February. The final selection of papers is published in May-June. However, papers submitted after October are saved and considered for the subsequent volume.

The Journal welcomes submissions of contributions covering all areas of intangible heritage studies and practice.

The inaugural volume included papers mainly from the ICOM 2004 Triennial General Conference. From Volume Two the Journal has established three categories of contributions as follows:

(1) Main articles (refereed), normally between 4,000 and 6,000 words, excluding notes, bibliography and illustrations. An A4 size page of plain text averages around 800 words, and the printed paper will normally be allocated six, eight or ten journal pages according to length and illustrations. Prospective authors should consult the Editorial Board through the Editor-in-Chief <editor@ijih.org> if a longer contribution is proposed.

(2) Short communications (refereed), of up to 2,000 words (two to four journal pages).

(3) News and reviews items of up to 1,000 words on relevant new conferences, publications or projects (which will be subject to normal editing by not formal refereeing.)

We are now seeking suitable contributions of all three categories: main papers, short communications, and news and reviews, on any aspect of intangible heritage.

Manuscripts submitted should not be under consideration by any other journal or publisher, nor should they have been previously published elsewhere. If a manuscript is based on a lecture, conference paper or talk, specific details should accompany the submission. There are detailed Instructions to Contributors on the preparation of manuscripts and illustrations in previous volumes of the Journal (in both the printed and electronic editions). These are available on the Journal website at <http://www.ijih.org>.

Paper proposals for the Journal can be submitted to the Journal Secretariat: <secretariat@ijih.org> (postal address below) at any time. Papers should be in electronic format, wherever possible should be submitted via e-mail. The submitted text (including an Abstract except for News and Reviews items), should be sent as an attachment to your e-mail message. Texts should be saved and submitted in unjustified text alignment in Rich Text Format (RTF). Illustrations should not be `embedded` in the text. Electronic images of the required quality (see the Instructions to Contributors), should be submitted as separate files. Original photographs should not be submitted at this stage, but a list summarising these should be included.

Please provide the full postal address of each author and of any institutional affiliation where applicable, including the country name, and an e-mail address contact address for each Author. Include at the end of the manuscript a short biography (80 words) for each Author.