cfp.english.upenn.edu

REPRESENTATIONS OF AGE

Papers are sought for this Working Session of the annual conference of the American Society for Theatre Research, taking place in Nashville November 1-4.

The rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of Age and Aging Studies opens onto gerontology, sociology, bioethics, anthropology, and a wide range of approaches springing from the humanities and arts, especially in Europe. However, as reflected at the recent European Network in Age Studies (ENAS) conference, the theatrical representation of Age and Aging has just begun to emerge as a major subject of critical inquiry.

The proposed Working Session seeks a wide range of papers exploring representations, from classic to contemporary, of Age and Aging in dramatic, theatrical, and cultural performance. Short performances and videos will also be considered. Building on the pathbreaking work of Kathleen Woodward, Anne Basting, Thomas Cole, Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Stephen Katz, Mike Featherstone and Andrew Wernick, Valerie Lipscomb, and Leni Marshall, as well as work in several European languages, the session will raise questions and seek perspectives:
Is there a dramaturgy of Age?
What are the performative differences between the spectacle of age and the experience of age? What emotions and what bodies (and what emotions about the bodies) are associated with Age and Aging?
Why has the youth/age binary been absent from the identity debates in theater and performance studies on race, gender, disability, and other bio-markers of the past decades?
In what ways are ageism and stereotyping factors in theatrical representations of aging?

By May 31, 2012, please send 300-word abstracts or two-minute performance links to elinor.fuchs@yale.edu . Final papers should be no longer than 2500 words.

http://www.astr.org/conference