The second annual Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee seeks submissions for a two-day graduate
student conference to be held February 23 and 24, 2007, focusing on the theme
"Performing (In)Visibility."

"Performing (In)Visibility" calls upon scholars to interrogate performance's
reliance on the visual and/or visible. Though performance is often imagined as
some public spectacle, emphasizing its visibility may also call forth invisible
or non-visible functions of discursive performatives. Thus, proposals might
consider how one visibly performs, what it means to perform something already
apparent, what goes unrecognized or gets left out of performances, and how we
might understand absence as an alternative performance. We are interested in
how tensions between visibility and invisibility, public and private, presence
and absence, and excess and restraint inform the ways we think about
performance/performativity as interdisciplinary theoretical constructs.

The conference seeks to engage such topics as:
        * Performance and the public/private sphere
        * Identity and its markers (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc) in/as
performance
        * Conceptual, performance and body art
        * Patriotism and/or performing nationalism, nationhood, or citizenship
        * Performance and New Media
        * Performance and history, authenticity, truth and/or fiction
        * Slam and other poetry performances
        * Performing war, globalism, violence, or terrorism
        * Excessive performances: spectacle, pageantry, carnival
        * Performance in sports/business environments: enhancement, anxiety, norms,
testing
        * The performance(s) of academia: discursive and pedagogical performances
        * Star personas, the media, and performance and/or notably unpopular
performances
        * Performing illness and healing
        * Capitalism/Materialism/Liberalism/Neoconservativism as performances
        * Archives and performance

Because performance and/or performativity are terms relevant to contemporary
critical inquiry across disciplines, we look forward to submissions from such
diverse fields as: Anthropology, Architecture, Art, Communications, Comparative
Literature, Critical Race Studies, Cultural Studies, Dance, Education, English,
Film, Gender Studies, Geography, History, Journalism, Law, Linguistics,
Medicine, Musicology, Performance Studies, Philosophy, Political Science,
Sociology, Theater, Urban Studies, as well as other relevant fields of study.

This year's keynote will be a performance of Michelle Matlock's The Mammy
Project. This work explores relationships between performance and identity as
Matlock "traces the life and times of Nancy Green, the first woman hired to
play the part of Aunt Jemima," following the American Mammy icon through
history and popular culture.

Please submit a 250-word abstract, with title, for a 15-20 minute presentation
as an MS Word file attachment to: grad-conference_at_uwm.edu

Deadline for Submissions: October 15, 2006

For more information, visit the conference website at:
grad-conference.blogspot.com

For more information on The Mammy Project, visit the website at:
www.themammyproject.com

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Received on Sat Sep 09 2006 - 10:53:18 EDT