JADT Special Issue – The Embodied Arts
The American Theatre and Drama Society invites submissions for the Spring 2019 issue of
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre
The Embodied Arts
Submission Deadline: 15 Oct. 2018
From the earliest examples of embodied art, theatre and dance have been intertwined. Witness the dual meaning of the ancient Hindu term “Nāṭya” as dance-theatre or the dithyrambic performances of the City Dionysia. However, within theatre, dance, and performance studies today, disciplinary divides remain that may not reflect the actualities of artistic practices historically or in our contemporary moment. Many artists operate across the embodied arts and are uninterested in defining their works within any particular disciplinary genre. As Kate Elswit argues in Theatre & Dance (2018) “The artificial divisions between the thing most often called ‘theatre’ and the thing most often called ‘dance’ in both academic and artistic spheres have overshadowed their interdependence” (2).
Inspired by Nadine George-Graves’s proposal in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater (2015) that we unify these connected fields under the rubric of “performative embodiment”(5), this special issue of JADT invites essays that attend to the intradisciplinary dynamics of the embodied arts. Within this call, the embodied arts are understood as complementary modes of discourse and practice, which trouble disciplinary boundaries and encourage broad scholarly inquiry.
Submissions might engage any of the questions below, though are not limited to them:
- How do we consider the aesthetics and politics of bodies moving through space and time?
- How are gesture, choreography, and movement meaning-makers in performance?
- How do artists, works, genres, and/or audiences enact or theorize relationships between corporeality and language?
- How do developing artistic practices, such as dance dramaturgy, invite an interdisciplinary toolbox encompassing both choreographic and linguistic communication?
Submissions that focus on the embodied arts — dance, theatre, performance art, or any hybrid form therein — across American geographies and historical moments are welcome. ATDS recognizes that notions of America encompass migrations of peoples and cultures that overlap and influence one another.
Manuscripts of up to 6000 words should be prepared in conformity with the Chicago Manual of Style, using endnotes, and submitted as attachments in Microsoft Word format. All correspondence will be conducted by e-mail. Submissions must be received no later than 15 October 2018; please e-mail queries and articles to Lezlie Cross (lezlie.cross@unlv.edu) and Ariel Nereson (anereson@buffalo.edu), guest editors of this special issue.
Authors need not be members of the American Theatre and Drama Society but submissions from members are especially encouraged.
For more information about JADT, see http://jadtjournal.org