Call for Papers

26th Annual Women and Theatre Program Conference
co-sponsored by:
Columbia College Chicago
Department of Art & Design and the
Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media

August 1-2, 2006
Columbia College, Chicago

"Displacements :: Genealogies, Generations and Geopolitics"

As we reflect on 2005, on the terrible displacements suffered in the Gulf Coast, Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia, we are reminded that change overflows place as well as time, dissolving lives as well as the organizations, identities and affiliations that once held them together. The 26th Annual Women and Theatre Program Conference will focus on active feminist responses to geopolitical realities that shape our artistic and academic work. We seek presentations, performances and panels that challenge the notions of containment and progress that mark today's increasingly hollow political rhetoric. How does feminist performance - and feminist critiques of performance - make use of diaspora, displacement, haunting, overflow and the breakdown of real and imagined barriers to imagine change? Are there feminist "threads" or genealogies of thought and action that remind us of the connection between environment and society, humans and other species, the present!
  and the
 future, identity and action? Are there opportunities, as well as dangers, in displacement? How can performance for and by women suggest resilient, ethical, workable and/or visionary responses to the social crises that sunder and overflow established barriers?

Suggested conference topics include, but are not limited to:
• eco-feminist performance and environmental politics
• ethics in action /ethical communities
• intergenerational politics
• transnational feminisms and diasporic performance
• theater and global politics: war, terrorism, "natural disasters" & strategies of dispossession
• feminism and postfeminism in times of crisis
• theater history and performance studies as "liberal" arts in illiberal times
• disidentification(s); the new sexism; gender, sexuality & chaos
• hauntings/bodies/borderlands/liminal spaces in performance
• feminist genealogies and feminist historiographies
• surveillance; technology as the source, intervention and/or solution to displacements

We encourage papers and panel proposals that incorporate innovative formats, multiple voices, and active dialogues. In other words, you are encouraged to propose configurations that go beyond the traditional 3-speaker presentation such as: seminars, roundtables, performances, workshops, and poster sessions for 1.5 hour sessions or 3 hour sessions. Confirmed Guests Artists for the conference include: About Face Theatre Company, Teatro Luna, and Karen Finley (a performance co-sponsored by Performance Studies and LGBT through an ATHE Focus Group Grant).

Email a 250 word abstract by March 1, 2006 to Sara Warner at slw42_at_cornell.edu with the subject heading WTP Conference Submission.

Women and Theatre Program, Association for Theatre in Higher Education
Lisa Merrill (Hofstra University), President

Sara L. Warner, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Cornell University
Department of Theatre, Film, & Dance
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
430 College Avenue
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-254-2727
dr_sara_warner_at_yahoo.com

http://complit.rutgers.edu/swarner

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Received on Tue Feb 07 2006 - 13:17:02 EST