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Thornton Wilder for 2020 ALA in San Diego, CA

The Thornton Wilder Society invites papers on any aspect of the author’s career (playwright, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, teacher) to be presented at the American Literature Association Annual Conference (21-24 May 2020) in San Diego, CA.  We particularly welcome papers on gender/sexuality and/or ethnicity but are open to all topics involving Wilder’s work and life.

For information about the author’s works and available editions, as well as published Wilder scholarship, go to: 

www.twildersociety.org/works/

 and 

www.twildersociety.org/education/bibliography/

The Society encourages graduate students as well as established scholars to submit 500‑word proposals and C.V.s to Park Bucker at psbucke@uscsumter.edu by January 15, 2020.

Publication Development Forum – Works-in-Progress from Contingent Faculty

Call for Works-in-Progress from

Contingent Faculty Colleagues

Publication Development Forum

hosted by Tufts University

February 7, 2020 – 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

 

Invitation

The Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University announces a one-day Works-in-Progress Publication Development Forum for contingent faculty colleagues in the Greater New England area.  Specifically designed to support faculty in contingent to positions, this forum invites them to share their current research at a no-cost regional event, sponsored by Tufts University, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the American Theatre and Drama Society.

Overview & On-site Hosts

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their current research with faculty colleagues and to meet with journal and book series editors.  On-site hosts and mentors include Professor Barbara Wallace Grossman (former Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Cultural Council), Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor, Kareem Khubchandani, Fletcher Foundation Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature, Lilian Mengesha, Associate Professor Noe Montez (Vice President for Professional Development at ATHE and Editor of Theatre Topics) and Professor Heather Nathans (past President of ASTR and current Editor of the Studies in Theatre History and Culture series for Iowa).  

Guest Speakers

We are delighted to announce that Robin Bernstein (award-winning author, Professor at Harvard University, and Editor of the Performance and American Culture series for NYU Press); Andrew Sofer (award-winning author and Professor at Boston College); and Harvey Young (award-winning author, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, and Editor of Theater: Text, Theory, Performance book series at The University of Michigan Press) will join us for conversations about the publication process.

Event Details

The conference will be Friday, February 7, 2019 from 10:00-5:00.  It includes topical workshops or discussions on various facets of professional development; 10-minute overviews of participants’ work presented to the assembled group; and one-on-one sessions with faculty mentors.  Informational sessions will be in the morning, followed by a group lunch (hosted by Tufts).  During the afternoon sessions participants will share their current scholarship and receive one-on-one mentorship.

The sharing of current research projects is not intended to be a series of formal paper presentations.  Instead we hope colleagues will use these sessions to brainstorm, seek advice, and push their work forward.  Colleagues maychoose to use their 10 minutes to share portions of conference papers in progress, sections of book chapters, drafts of book proposals, etc.

How to apply/Eligibility

Individuals holding PhDs in the fields of theatre, performance, dance, or related specialties and who are working part-time or fulltime while seeking permanent academic positions will bring work-in-progress to the meeting to share with a faculty mentor/host. The goal is to advance draft writing towards publication/submission.

Each participant will commit to a mentoring relationship with a tenure-line or emeritus faculty member who will serve as commentator on the writing and mentor on career-related questions. Mentees will commit to developing their writing projects and mentors will work with the mentee until the writing is ready to submit for publication.

To make it possible for the maximum number of colleagues to join us, we will offer a small stipend to offset any gas/subway/bus costs.  Lunch and other refreshments will be provided throughout the day.  Tufts University will purchase one-day parking passes for participants arriving by car.

To apply, please submit the application form below to pdcontingent2020@gmail.com. The application asks you to provide the title and status of your current project to assist in pairing participants with prospective mentors.  Applications should be received no later than December 20, 2019.  Please note that space is limited.  Applicants will be notified by December 30, 2019 if they are accepted.  Participants must submit drafts of their materials no later than January 5, 2020 to allow mentors time to review their works in progress. 

 

Support and Sponsorship

This event owes much to the generous support of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the American Theatre and Drama Society.  These organizations recognize the challenges non-tenure stream and contingent faculty may face in participating in annual national conferences due to travel costs.  They also recognize the challenges many contingent faculty members encounter in terms of ongoing mentorship towards publication. 

 

Please contact Heather Nathans, Chair of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Tufts University at pdcontingent2020@gmail.com with any questions.

ATDS Panel at American Literature Association 2020

Staging Democracy: Politics and Political Figures in 20th/21st century American Drama

American Theatre & Drama Society Panel
at the American Literature Association
31st Annual Conference May 21-24 2020 San Diego CA

The American Literature Association is a coalition of literary and drama societies devoted to the study of American authors. Since 1989, ALA’s annual conferences have provided scholars and artists from around the world a space in which to interact and to explore the richness and diversity of American writing. The American Theatre & Drama Society is dedicated to the study of theatre and drama in and of the Americas, its varied histories, traditions, literatures, identities, and performances within its cultural contexts. In furtherance of this goal, ATDS solicits proposals for its guaranteed panel at the American Literature Association Annual Conference in May 2020.

In view of the current political climate – campaigns, controversies, party polarization, and increased engagement by concerned citizens, ATDS proposes a panel focusing on dramatizations by American playwrights of America’s political systems and political leaders. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries American playwrights have increasingly explored these topics, including our democratic ideals and struggles for the realization of those ideals. From Maxwell Anderson’s Both Your Houses (1934) to Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop (2009) and Robert Schenkkan’sAll the Way (2012) to 2019 Pulitzer finalist Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, American playwrights have used the stage to investigate political issues including courage, corruption, power, compromise, inclusion and exclusion in America’s social, cultural, and political life. We invite proposals that consider plays and performances that address these and related issues. We welcome analytical papers employing any theoretical/critical approach as well as analyses of plays in production.

Please submit a 250-word abstract by December 31, 2019 to Al Dabiri, mdabiri@mail.missouri.edu. Panelists will be notified by January 31, 2020. Panelists are expected to be or to become ATDS members.  For more information on ATDS, or to join or renew, please visit https://www.atds.org/

The 2020 ALA conference will be held in San Diego CA from May 21st-24th . Panelists are expected to pre-register by April 15 2020.  Those who do not register by May 1 will be dropped from the program.

Please note that the conference has an admission fee of $125 dollars ($100 for Graduate Students, Independent Scholars, and Retired Faculty).

For more information on ALA, please visit:

http://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/

SETC Theatre Symposium – Theatre and Race

SETC Theatre Symposium Volume 29

“Theatre and Race”

DATES: April 3-5, 2020 LOCATION: Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA

The performative nature of political and cultural discourse about race has recently been highlighted, both in the U.S. and around the world, by tweets and talk shows, parades and protests, movements and mass shootings, comedy routines and court decisions. These events and expressions invite a scholarly exploration of the histories, legacies, and responsibilities of theatre’s long engagement with race.

What is the historical and ongoing role of theatre in framing our ideas and conversations about race? How is current theatre practice challenging established paradigms, if at all? The organizers of the 2020 Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC) Theatre Symposium invite the contributions of scholars, artists, and educators from a wide range of fields who wish to address the intersection of race and theatre. Those whose proposals are accepted will gather to collectively listen and comment upon each others’ work. Subsequent submissions of essay-length versions of conference presentations will be peer reviewed, and if selected will be published in Volume 29 of SETC’s annual Theatre Symposium journal. The conference fee of $150 includes registration, conference materials, and selected meals at the event.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Historical dramas or theatrical productions that reflected and shaped constructions of race

• Theatre’s role, historically and presently, in the formation and perpetuation of racial hierarchies

• Current plays and productions aimed at challenging audiences’ perceptions of race

• Theatrical and performative fomentations of, and responses to, racialized violence

• Theatrical work that seeks to link race to gender, class, sexuality, nationality, or religion

• Drama or theatrical practice that posits a “post-racial” world

Keynote speaker Dr. Soyica Colbert of Georgetown University will present an address on this year’s topic, and will provide a concluding response. Dr. Colbert is the Idol Family Professor of Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences, Director of Theater and Performance Studies in the Department of Performing Arts, and a Professor of African American Studies. She is the author of The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance and the Stage and Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, and the co-editor of The Psychic Hold of Slavery. Her work has appeared in multiple journals and edited collections. Her research interests span the 19th-21st centuries, from Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, and from poetics to performance.

On or before 6 January 2020, please send abstracts of no more than a single page to Andrew Gibb, Editor, at andrew.gibb@ttu.edu. Please use “LastName TS Abstract” as your subject line. Abstracts should include complete contact information (email, phone, postal address).

Theatre Annual Seeking Book Review Editor

,

Theatre Annual, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Theatre and Drama Society, seeks applications for the position of Book Review Editor.

The Book Review Editor is responsible for maintaining up-to-date lists of books available for review; fielding inquiries for reviews; commissioning reviews; editing reviews; coordinating with journal editor and press; meeting deadlines for publication; and establishing and maintaining relationships with book publishers.

The successful applicant will join the editorial team as associate Book Review Editor in November 2019 for the 2020 issue. The Book Review Editor’s term will begin in spring 2020, for the 2021 issue. The term is three years, with possibility for renewal. Though the application process is open to all interested individuals, it is expected that the Book Review Editor will maintain an ATDS membership in good standing for the duration of their term.

Applicants should send a CV and a brief statement of interest addressing relevant experience to Hillary Miller (hillary.miller@qc.cuny.edu), chair of the review committee and by October 31, 2019.

Theatre Annual is the oldest theatre periodical continuously published in the United States. It is dedicated to examining theatre and performance of the Americas. We construe “America” broadly to include North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean Islands. Articles may treat work in these geographic areas or work from these areas that is presented elsewhere in the world. We welcome articles on the history and ethnography of performance, drawing from such areas as theatre studies, performance studies, popular culture, music, anthropology, dance, communication, philosophy, folklore, history, and areas of interest that cross disciplinary lines.

Please find additional information on the Theatre Annual website: https://theatreannual.atds.org.

Please direct questions to hillary.miller@qc.cuny.edu.

Thank you for your interest in Theatre Annual!

Review committee:

Mark Cosdon, Co-chair, ATDS Editorial Committee
Hillary Miller, Co-chair, ATDS Editorial Committee
Jonathan Lee Chambers, ATDS Editorial Committee
Derek Miller, ATDS Editorial Committee

Ilka Saal, editor, Theatre Annual
Ann Folino White, incoming editor (2020), Theatre Annual
Meredith Conti, book review editor, Theatre Annual

JADT Special Issue – Affect Theory in Performance

The Journal of American Drama and Theatre

Special Issue: Affect Theory in Performance

Co-Edited by Kevin Byrne and Greg Pierotti

Winter 2020/21

Call for Papers

“Ordinary affects,” writes Kathleen Stewart in the introduction to her 2007 book of the same name, “are an animate circuit that conducts force and maps connections, routes, and disjunctures.”  As an evolving area of inquiry, Affect Theory explores emotions, the body, and materiality as ways to theorize cultural products, interrogate political agency, and privilege—at least for a moment—the felt sense over the conceptual.  Drawing from performance studies to investigate “public feelings,” Affect Theory is a proprioceptive perception for engaging with the world.

This special issue of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre aligns Affect Theory with theatre theory and US performance history.  The editors seek articles from practitioners and scholars that bring Affect Theory into conversation with dramatic forms.  Either broadly conceived or meticulously focused, essays could address:

  • theoretical models for using Affect Theory in performance
  • performance archives and affect
  • how contemporary theatre is making (or failing to make) work which incorporates affect
  • the ways in which performance practice can elucidate Affect Theory
  • introductions to companies who dramatize the affective

If you have any questions, please contact Kevin Byrne (kjbyrne@email.arizona.edu) or Greg Pierotti (pierotti@email.arizona.edu).  The deadline for paper submissions is March 15, 2020.

 

MATC 2020 Theatre History Symposium

The 41 st Annual Mid-America Theatre Conference
March 5 – 8, 2020
Embassy Suites Downtown Magnificent Mile, Chicago, IL

“CHARACTER”

Theatre History Symposium—Call for Papers

From archetypes and stock characters to musings from theorists such as Zeami and Aristotle, character is inextricably linked to the art of theatre. Additionally, character refers to nature or qualities: it may rationalize misfortune (“hard work builds character”), refer to perceived difference (“he’s a character”), or signal integrity (“she’s got character”). A character is also a graphic figure (“Limit your tweets to 280 characters”). In today’s world, we are constantly reevaluating “character” and resultant ethical quandaries: How do we judge one’s character? When is something out of character? What does it mean to play a character?

As historians, we face questions regarding the character of past practices and the ways we characterize the past. Scholarly choices such as format, structure, and medium shape the character of historical narratives that impact how others understand the past. In terms of this year’s host city, the character of Chicago has shaped a vibrant performance landscape, and theatrical representations of the metropolis have shaped perceptions of the city’s identity.

This year’s Theatre History Symposium invites participants to consider ways in which character allows us to re-think, re-imagine, and re-create the pages and stages on which we work and the world in which those pages and stages are created. Questions that papers may address include, but are not limited to: How do historical narratives characterize not only the past, but the present and future? What characters from the past persist and how do practitioners address these characters? How do historiographic approaches characterize our work? In what ways has “the past”/“history” played characters in dramatic works? How are characters redefined/recomposed across temporal, spatial, national, and linguistic boundaries? What roles do characters play in the creation of moral, political, nationalistic, ethical, religious messages and/or propaganda? How has emphasis on character marginalized non-Western or avant-garde performance? How do nonWestern modes of theatre articulate/differentiate/engage with the notion of a performing body?

Please submit proposals via the online form available at https://forms.gle/tjoDf49a4Ni4Nz619

● Please be prepared to include a brief biography, title and abstract for your paper (250 words), and audiovisual requests for your presentation on your submission form. (Please note, we cannot guarantee AV support but will consider requests when scheduling.)

● We also welcome proposals for full panels. Contact the co-chairs for more information.

● No individual may submit to more than two symposia. This limit is put in place to avoid scheduling conflicts and to provide more individuals the opportunity to present.

We are excited to announce that Dr. Stuart Hecht will serve as this year’s Symposium Respondent.

Theatre History Symposium Co-Chairs: Heidi L. Nees, PhD Bowling Green State University

Matthieu Chapman, PhD University of Houston

Please email the Symposium Co-Chairs at theatre_history@matc.us with any questions.

All proposals must be received by October 15, 2019

Robert A. Schanke Award The Robert A. Schanke Research Award is given annually to an untenured faculty presenter of the Theatre History Symposium and carries a cash award of $500 and consideration for publication in Theatre History Studies, the Mid-America Theatre Conference journal. For consideration, submit your full, conference-length version of your paper to the co-chairs at the email address above by February 7, 2020.

Black Comedy in Contemporary Theatre

Call for Papers: Black Comedy in Contemporary Theater

Panel at the Comparative Drama Conference, Rollins College, Orlando, Florida: April 2-4, 2020

Deadline: October 31, 2019

 

Black comedy, as a genre, is under-theorized.  Black comedy received scholarly attention fifty years ago with the advent of such literary humorists as Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller.  Interest has resurged in the twenty-first century in response to idiosyncratic cinematography of Quentin Tarantino or the Cohen Brothers, and in order to address the mordant satire of alternative media post-9/11. 

However, black comedy has yet to be fully explored in contemporary drama.  André Breton famously referred to black comedy as ‘the mortal enemy of sentimentality’ (1997: xix) in his 1940 collection, Anthologie de l’humour noir, indicating that its usefulness lies in its ability to examine and expose life’s cruelties from a candid, irreverent perspective.  The dynamic of the theater has the capacity to illustrate the symbolic violence inflicted on people through destructive relationships, flawed institutions or corrupt commercial media, and to expose how society willfully denies the existence of such suffering through the audience’s laughter. It is time to consider how the theatrical stage can deploy black humor to amplify the darkness and cruelty of life.

This Call for Papers asks writers to consider any number of contemporary dramatists in their discussion of black comedy, such as (but not limited to!) John Guare, Arthur Kopit, Christopher Durang, Tracy Letts, Nicky Silver, and Paula Vogel.  Many playwrights embrace the ideological stance of the black humorist, but vary wildly in style and tone, and the panel hopes to represent this extensiveness.

Topics range from:

  • How black comedy evolved from yet differs from Theater of the Absurd
  • The effect of black comedy on audience reactions
  • Topics handled best or more frequently by black comedic authors
  • Limitations of the genre’s style or reception
  • Cultural, political, or social forces that elicit black comedy
  • Popularity or lack thereof of black comedic writers
  • Film and theater overlap in black comedy

Interested participants in “Black Comedy in Contemporary Theater” panel should send abstracts of approximately 250 words by October 31, 2019 to Miriam Chirico at chiricom@easternct.edu.  Three papers of 15-minuts duration will comprise this pre-organized panel at the Comparative Drama Conference in April.  All applicants will be notified of the status of their submissions by early November. 

All papers presented at the CDC 2020 are eligible to be considered for publication in the annual book series Text and Presentation, upon development into a full-length scholarly essay. For more information see the conference website:  http://blogs.rollins.edu/drama/

Theatre Journal – Minor Asias

Theatre Journal

Call for Papers

Special Issue for September 2020: Minor Asias

The 50th anniversary of Asian American Studies has coincided with a number of phenomena that challenge the ways in which we might think about the utility and limits of that rubric. Increased policing of particular minority communities within China, protests in Hong Kong, growing recognition of indigeneity in Taiwan, ongoing tensions between Okinawa and Japan, recognition of Koryo-Saram in Kazakhstan, regional and ethnic articulations in Thailand, the circulation of diasporas within and beyond the eastern hemisphere—all of these examples point to networks that complicate how Asia means. Moreover, the global financial power of Asian economies, especially within the cultural industries, has produced a number of new subjects such as the African trader in Guangzhou and the white K-Pop band. Theatre and performance studies has slowly been responding to these shifts but, for the most part, has not assumed a central role in the scholarship. Nevertheless, the emphases of our fields on body, space, audience, and technology promise major interventions even as the shifts in Asia itself might challenge assumptions about some of those analytic categories. This special issue, then, takes up Asia together with Asian American and diasporic circulation in the wake of ongoing historical imperialisms and the current era of globalization.

The turn to Minor Asias recognizes several factors. Theatre Journal has accorded relatively little importance to Asian performance (notwithstanding a previous special issue on that topic) in spite of the magnitude and influence of Asian cultural flows now and in the past. Moreover, Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih’s edited volume Minor Transnationalism, argues compellingly for the need to explore what they have called the “transversal” relationships that move above and below the scale of the national and what one might call the continental. Such a call exists in tandem with various regional assertions that have existed and continue to influence politics from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere imposed by Japan to the Asian Values discourse deployed by Malaysia and Singapore. Lionnet and Shih’s general attention to the minor builds on Edouard Glissant’s ideas of rélation which argues for a decolonizing poetics and an expansive ethics of connection and recognition. In an intersecting analysis, Kuan-Hsing Chen in Asia as Method has tried to articulate how globalization manifests as societies within Asia use one another as a reference point. In this vein, globalization perhaps paradoxically produces regionalization.

Such theoretical conundrums might be productively explored through several material examples, and the editors invite essays from any geographic site or historical period that might articulate “Minor Asia.” As Anna Tsing has written, globalization is a history of social projects that might be traced through the “sticky materiality of practical encounters” that might “give grip to universal aspirations.” We seek to amplify Asia’s importance to theatre and performance studies and to insist on the relevance of theatre and performance to Asian and Asian diasporic studies.

This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal coeditor Sean Metzger. We will consider both full length essays for the print edition (6,000-9,000 words) as well as proposals for other expressions of interest for our on-line platform. For information about submission, visit our website:https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/author-guidelines

Submissions (6000-9000 words) should submitted no later than 1 January 2020.

Note: Watch for our transition to submissions via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatrejournal

Until then, submissions should be e-mailed to managing editor Bob Kowkabany (bobkowkabany@me.com)

Feel free to contact the editors with questions or inquiries:
Sean Metzger, Coeditor at smetzger@tft.ucla.edu
Margherita Laera, Online Editor at m.laera@kent.ac.uk

Theatre Journal – The Global South

Theatre Journal

Call for Papers

Special Issue for December 2020: The Global South

The idea of ordering regions into \”north\” and \”south\” began during the Cold War, first as the Non-Aligned Movement and then as the Group of 77 member states of the United Nations. While these nations were initially designated \”The Third World,\” the dissolution of the Soviet Union made such a designation obsolete. However, the challenges faced by the formerly colonized world remained much the same, and neoliberal globalization exacerbated already pressing environmental and economic crises. That most of these states are situated south of the imperial powers prompted political analysts to begin using the term \”global south\” in the 1980s and 1990s. It has since become a common ground for scholars and activists attempting to address large-scale problems across regional and disciplinary boundaries.

In the journal The Global South, established just a decade ago, Levander and Mignolo hoped the new ordering would offer \”productive pathways and contact points for new modes of scholarly exchange that can work against such long-standing imperatives\” that \”sustain and normalize the ways in which we parse power systems in an increasingly global age.\”[1] Working through the lens of the Global South has generated working groups at the Hemispheric Institute\’s Encuentro and the American Society for Theatre Research. Within theatre and performance studies, pulling together research on performance practices and performance history of the Global South can enable us to explore the structure of postcolonial power, dynamics of imperialism, the effects of globalism, cultural hybridities, environmental impacts, and the kinds of cooperative connections being forged between regions within the Global South that can bring productive, effective social change.

For this special issue, essays might cover performance practice, history, and theory situated in the Global South: Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Essays may examine, collaborations, hybridities, and resistances, as well as preservation, traditions, and tools of state oppression. What are our responsibilities as scholars of the Global South? How can \”(t)hose of us in postindustrial countries who research performance in these \’other\’ parts of the world should be particularly cognizant of the ethical responsibility\” to disrupt familiar \”tropes of passivity and helplessness\” as Laura Edmonson has noted?[2]What is gained by using the \”Global South\” as a conceptual frame? What is lost?

This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal editor E.J. Westlake. We will consider both full length essays for the print edition (6,000-9,000 words) as well as proposals for other expressions of interest for our on-line platform. For information about submission, visit our website:https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/author-guidelines

Submissions (6000-9000 words) should submitted no later than 1 February 2020.

 

Note: Watch for our transition to submissions via ScholarOne:

https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatrejournal

Until then, submissions should be e-mailed to managing editor Bob Kowkabany (bobkowkabany@me.com)

Feel free to contact the editors with questions or inquiries:
E.J. Westlake, Editor at ej.westlake.theatrejournal@gmail.com
Margherita Laera, Online Editor at m.laera@kent.ac.uk

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