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Call for Papers: PSFG/ATHE 2013 Emerging Scholars Panel

The Performance Studies Focus Group (PSFG) of the Association of Theater in Higher Education (ATHE) conference invites submissions of papers for its Emerging Scholars Panel. The theme of this year’s conference, which will take place in Orlando, Florida, August 1-4, 2013, is P[L]AY: Performance, Pleasure, and Pedagogy.

The PSFG Emerging Scholars Panel is an opportunity for researchers to present their work at a major international conference at the outset of their career. Selected emerging scholars will be paired with a mentor from the field of Performance Studies who will offer critical feedback on submitted papers in preparation for the conference. Successful applicants will receive a $100 stipend as well as complimentary registration to the ATHE PSFG pre-conference. The PSFG will also award an Honorable Mention to an additional emerging scholar, who will be invited to attend the conference and join the focus group.

Located at the boundaries and intersections of scholarly and artistic practice, Performance Studies theorizes and analyzes embodied practices and events, and explores the ways in which performance creates meaning and shapes social life. Convened in a luxury resort just minutes away from the marvels, attractions, and distractions of the Magic Kingdom, this year’s PSFG sessions will focus on the ways performance intersects with questions of play, pleasure, and payment. We invite submissions that consider new avenues of performance inquiry opened up by ludic activity. How do economic considerations—such as commodified playfulness, capitalist spectacle, and global economies of experience—provide a set of contours against which performance can approach this activity? What (cultural, political, historical) work does play perform, and what mechanisms allow the performativity of play to work? Under the banner of play, what dialogues can Performance Studies open up across the traditional divide between theory and practice?

Submissions to the PSFG Emerging Scholars Panel may engage these questions generated by the conference theme, or may relate issues raised by Performance Studies more broadly. Papers across performance modes and historical periods are welcome. Topics may include:

• contested boundaries between performance, theater, and other art forms/disciplines
• performance as a modality of (historical) knowledge and memory
• historiographical approaches to performance
• negotiating and building identity through performance
• the role of performance in shifting configurations of power and resistance
• performative strategies of the avant-garde
• conflict, confrontation, and dissensus in the performance encounter
• intersections of performance and philosophy
• performance within postcolonial and neocolonial contexts
• performativity and theatricality
• embodiment and technological culture
• complexity, ambiguity, and paradox in performance

Papers for the PSFG Emerging Scholars Panel should be 8-10 double-spaced pages in length. The deadline for submission is Monday, February 11, 2013. Please send completed papers (as attachments in Microsoft Word) along with a current CV to Gillian Young at gty2104@columbia.edu. Questions regarding the panel may also be directed to Gillian at this address. Successful applicants will be notified in late March 2013.