Paper proposals are sought for the following seminar at the American
Comparative Literature Association conference on Trans, Pan, Intra: Cultures
in Contact, to be held in Puebla, Mexico, April 19-22:

"Missing Pieces: Theatre, Performance and Circulation in the Americas"

Seminar Organizers:
Sarah J. Townsend, NYU
Kahlil Chaar, NYU

Both theoretical and historical accounts of theatre and performance
frequently privilege the here-and-now (or then-and-there) aspect of live
performance. While this perspective is valid, it often neglects to address
an important question: how do theatre and performance enter into
circulation? This seminar proposes to examine the relationship between
performance and circulation in the Americas in ways that challenge the
tendency to view performative culture as an unmediated expression of local
or national imaginaries. This might include addressing some of the following
questions:

In what sense can embodied, performative practices transmit and construct
historical knowledge? Are there ways of understanding the relationship
between history and theatre that do not simply rely on notions of symbolic
representation? How might the question of genre figure into this?

How have theatre and performance been involved in generating forms of
identification such as race and class that are not exclusively defined by
geography? How have they factored into the regional, continental, and global
traffic of bodies, knowledge, and capital?

How do performance genres interact with print culture and mass media? To
what extent have these other cultural spheres been defined in relation to or
against performance, and vice versa? What role have theatre and performance
played in undermining and/or erecting divides between "high" and "low"?

Proposals can be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

Abstracts (250 words maximum) must be submitted directly through the
ACLA website:
http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/
Please specify "Missing Pieces" as the Seminar title

Deadline for abstract submission is November 1, 2006.

For questions, please contact Sarah J. Townsend at sjt239_at_nyu.edu

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Received on Sat Oct 14 2006 - 21:43:43 EDT