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.