Time: October 2025 (dates to be announced soon)

Place: Graduate Center, CUNY

Deadline for All Submissions: September 15th, 2025

The PhD Program in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center, CUNY invites proposals

for our 2-day graduate student conference under the theme Emerging/Emergent.

What does it mean to emerge?

In moments of political, ecological, and social precarity, the act of emerging is not simply a

debut—it is a response, a resistance, and a reconfiguration. Emerging forms, styles, voices, and

practices in theatre and performance are often misunderstood as spontaneous innovations. But

emergence is not about appearing from nowhere—it is about the slow, subterranean labor of

taking root. It is the moment when practices long nurtured beneath the surface press upward

through heavy earth and stone, responding urgently to the conditions that suppress or obscure

them.

This conference seeks to foreground the emerging/emergent as a product of resilience,

reclamation, and urgency under contemporary and contemporaneous constraints. We are

particularly interested in how theatre and performance that are/were conceived as “new,”

whether historically or rooted in the contemporary discourse, serve as vital sites for emergent

ways of making, knowing, and being together.

As part of our dedication to the theme, we hope this conference will serve as a space for

emerging scholars and artists to find one another—to build community and foster ongoing

collaboration. Along with panel discussions, we hold a roundtable for emerging

artists/scholars who are willing to share resources and personal experience and connect with

each other. The theme Emerging/Emergent reflects not only the content of our inquiry, but also

the conference’s intent to cultivate connection, solidarity, and mutual support among those

taking root in the field.

This year’s conference will be held in tandem with the 2025 Edwin Booth Award ceremony,

honoring composer, playwright, and lyricist Michael R. Jackson. Best known for his Pulitzer

Prize and Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop, Jackson’s work powerfully echoes our

theme—foregrounding queer experience, inner life, and the complex (and sometimes tortuous)

process of becoming. We are thrilled to celebrate his contributions as part of our shared

gathering.

How to Participate?

Send all submissions and inquiries to Mia Zhu (zzhu4@gradcenter.cuny.edu) by September

15th 2025 with the subject line: Emerging/Emergent CFP Submission.

(1) Emerging Scholar/Artist Roundtable

Please submit your CV and a Statement of Intent (2 pages) on the topics, resources, and

personal experience or projects you hope to share with all roundtable participants, as well as

what you hope to gain and what kind of connection you hope you build during the event.

We will structure the roundtable and facilitate sub-group discussions based on participants’

backgrounds. Welcome to tell us about your practices and interests. It helps us to match you

with kindred spirits.

(2) Panels/Individual Papers

We invite submissions that engage with the conference theme from a range of disciplinary,

methodological, and creative perspectives. Possible topics may include (but not limited to):

● Emerging Practices as Urgent Practices: How are artists and scholars responding to

crisis and upheaval through new forms, methods, and content?

● Emerging Countries and International Migrations: Performance across borders,

diasporic identity, and migratory aesthetics.

● Bodies at Risk: Performing bodies under threat, surveillance, precarity, or

marginalization.

● Accessibility: Reimagining access, inclusivity, and the politics of participation.

● “Firsts”: Historic or personal debuts; inaugural performances; moments of

breakthrough.

● Discovery in the Archive: Excavating forgotten, overlooked, or suppressed

performance histories as emerging histories.

● Emerging Tech: Intersections between performance and developing media and

technologies.

● Ecological/Environmental/Climate Crisis: Performance on the edge of ecological

collapse.

We welcome both individual paper proposals and complete panel proposals. Individual

presentations should be approximately 15–20 minutes in length. Panels should include 3–4

presenters and a moderator.

Please submit the following materials:

● For individual papers: a 300-word abstract and a short bio (100 words).

● For panel proposals: a 250-word description of the panel theme, along with individual

abstracts (300 words each) and bios (100 words each) for all participants.

We especially encourage submissions from scholars, artists, and practitioners from underrepresented communities and disciplines.

Join us in making space for what has long been rooted—and is now emerging, urgently and communally.