The Performance Studies Focus Group (PSFG) of the
Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)
invites paper submissions for its 5th annual
preconference, entitled "Regeneration and Return:
Performance Studies in New Orleans," to take place
July 25-26. As generations of performance studies
scholars turn – and return – to New Orleans, we seek a
variety of proposals that address the panel topic
described below. While the city of New Orleans is
central to many of the questions presented here, we
welcome scholarship that employs various methodologies
and geographic points of entry.

Panel #2: Staging Race, Staging Place: The Local and
the Diasporic

This panel investigates relationships between
performances of race and ethnicity and the local, the
spatial, and the geographic -- what Una Chaudhuri has
termed "staging place." As a site of convergence of
racial and ethnic difference, place, and diaspora in
the cultural imaginary, New Orleans has historically
been a locale in which racial and ethnic formations
have been established and contested by means of
performance. Furthermore, from the Middle Passage, to
Indian Removal, to the Great Migration, to the massive
diaspora following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and
its surroundings have frequently been a "staging
ground" for racialized communities on the move.
This panel uses the city as a springboard – a point of
departure – in order to examine how race and place,
the local and the diasporic, are performed. We seek
papers that approach the subject from
multidisciplinary landscapes. Papers might address
the following questions:

• How does a particular geographic or cultural locale
inform the staging of race in performance? How are
places racialized by means of performance?

• Is there a relationship between particular types of
performance spaces and representations of race and
ethnicity? How do performers use public spaces to
stage local and diasporic identities?

• How are racialized bodies staged in highly mediated
environments, such as chatrooms or stages that
incorporate new media forms?

• Can performance, often thought of as spatially or
architecturally bounded, be understood as mobile,
diasporic, on the move? If performance is diasporic,
what is performance's proper "site"? How do different
performance strategies stage migration?

Those wishing to present on this panel should submit
an abstract of 250 words to the conveners via e-mail
by November 20. All abstracts should be in Word
Document or PDF format. The preconference will begin
on morning of July 25, so presenters should plan
accordingly. For more information on the Performance
Studies Focus Group, including an archive of past
preconferences, please visit our website at:
http://www.athe.org/FG/ps/.

Please submit your abstract with a brief biography to
both conveners at the following e-mail addresses:

Jason Farman: jasonfarman_at_yahoo.com
Paige McGinley: Paige_McGinley_at_brown.edu

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Received on Fri Nov 10 2006 - 19:36:33 EST