CfP: IFTR Popular Entertainments Working Group
June 19-31
Cologne, Germany
Abstracts due January 15, 2025
IFTR’s Popular Entertainments Working Group is interested in uncovering and giving
voice to historical forms of popular performance that have largely been overlooked in
dominant theatre history narratives. The multiple performance styles/genres within the
group’s field of interest include circus, burlesque, variety, vaudeville, revue, sport as
performance, music in popular entertainments, popular theatre, clowns, comedy,
stand-up, video gaming, cosplay, comic festivals and more. More recently the scope and focus of the group’s work has expanded to consider popular entertainment’s important role in the wider theatre ecology; the influences of the popular on historical avant-garde and contemporary experimental practices; and the changing cultural status of popular forms. You can find out more about the group’s work athttps://iftr.org/working-groups/popular-entertainments
For the IFTR conference in 2025, which will take place in Cologne, Germany from 9-13 June, the Popular Entertainments Working Group wishes to take advantage of the conference theme of Performing Carnival and its keywords of Ekstasis, Subversion, and Metamorphosis to highlight the omnipresence of popular entertainments both temporally and spatially.
At the 2024 conference in Manila, we discussed the tendency for popular entertainments to be dismissed as culturally and temporally delimited and lacking in aesthetics and social criticism. We welcome proposals on all aspects of popular entertainment. We would especially welcome abstracts within the context of the conference theme and/or that consider how popular entertainment: cultivates intermediality, intercultural, and chronological networks
is situated within an aesthetic context serves the subversive aspects of the carnivalesque embraces intermediality and crosses temporalities through embodiment recuperates lost voices repurposes the negative language used against popular entertainment survives and adapts to legislation and regulation creates grounds for resistance and transformation
For those who are interested, we’d like to consider Stuart Hall’s essay “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular.’” Working group member Jason Price will be leading a discussion of the article on Zoom in early January. (Information forthcoming in the next couple of months.) Submissions that engage with the article and one or more of the prompts above may be considered for a general panel to be proposed by the working group. IT IS NOT REQUIRED THAT YOU ENGAGE WITH THE ARTICLE FOR YOUR ABSTRACT TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THE WORKING GROUP.
Group Meetings
The Popular Entertainments Working Group operates by circulating members’ draft papers in advance of the conference, enabling a more focused discussion. Once papers are circulated, members are then asked to nominate another paper they’d like to moderate. The group allocates approximately twenty minutes for discussion of each
paper. Members are asked to speak about their research for ten minutes; visual or AV material that amplifies or supports their paper in some way is encouraged. (As all papers are read in advance, presenters are not required to provide an oral summary of their paper.) A moderator assigned to the paper will then lead the remaining ten minutes
of discussion.
Submission of Abstracts
Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted no later than 15 January 2025 via IFTR’s Cambridge Core portal. Please specify ‘Popular Entertainments’ working group when submitting your abstract. Accepted participants will be asked to submit full papers (no more than 5000 words) to the convenors in early May for distribution. Papers need not be in a finished state: drafts and works-in-progress are acceptable. Once gathered, all papers will be made available to group members for reading and a discussant will be allocated to each.
Please send any questions to the conveners of the Popular Entertainments Working Group:
Aastha Gandhi, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, Delhi: agandhi@aud.ac.in
Susan Kattwinkel, College of Charleston, U.S.A.: kattwinkels@cofc.edu