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Canadian Association for Theatre Research Panel

CATR (Canadian Association for Theatre Research) Conference
June 17-20, Montreal 
 
Panel: “Leading With Performance: Interdisciplinary Arts-Led Innovations Inside the Neoliberal University”
Organizers: Kim Solga, Amala Poli, and Masha Kouznetsova, Western University
 
Scholars of theatre and performance studies know that performance is a “mobile critical paradigm,” as Kathleen Gallagher and Barry Freeman provocatively write in the introduction to In Defense of Theatre (2015). Our deep familiarity with performance’s power as a cross-disciplinary learning modality, however, means we can easily forget that this isn’t common knowledge. We know that working through performance can lead to everything from technical innovation and social change to increased individual and community wellbeing; the leaders of our major institutions – including our universities – often have no clue.
 
Over the last three years we have been engaged in a campus-based teaching research project that begins from the premise that performing arts-led, interdisciplinary teaching can have profound real-world benefits for undergraduate students from a wide range of fields. Our project ran a pilot class with 18 students from 7 of Western’s 13 faculties in 2022-23, and our data from their experience underscores how utterly transformative the class was for all of them – especially those from STEM backgrounds.
 
We’re thrilled at what we’ve achieved so far, but we also know we aren’t alone: many of us are working to integrate performance into broader curricular change across the country. In this roundtable, we will gather a mix of those voices to hear what you are doing, how you are doing it, and (especially) how you are communicating performance’s powers to innovate across fields and to support students, faculty, staff, and community wellbeing to those who need most to hear about it.
 
We’re interested in hearing about:
–       Innovations at classroom level
–       Collaborations with instructors in other disciplines
–       Curricular innovations at school/faculty level
–       Integrating performance-based or embodied learning outside theatre and performance programs
–       Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary curricular innovations led by performance
–       Innovations that use performance to develop, support, or advance equity initiatives
–       Creative pedagogies that foster a community of care in the classroom 
–       Embodied learning approaches geared towards advancing collective well-being
–       …something amazing you’re working on that we just cannot even imagine yet.
 
We keenly encourage applications from folks from equity-deserving communities, and from folks at all stages of the career spectrum – from the young and/or underemployed to senior teachers to administrators who also teach and innovate.
 
Please sent a 250-word description of your project/innovation and a 50-word biography to ksolga@uwo.ca and apoli@uwo.ca by March 15, 2024. 

Plants Beyond Borders

Plants Beyond Borders

Although they are the most abundant life form on earth, plants have received scant attention from ecocritics until recently. As allies in the rethinking of human exceptionalism and the limits of human conceptions of nation, race, sexuality, disability, and invasion, plants challenge us to reimagine our philosophical and material relationship to the beings which enable each breath we take.  

For this edited collection (working title: Plants Beyond Borders) we invite 4,000-6,000 word- contributions that take an interdisciplinary approach to reimagining and rethinking plants and/or human relationships with plants throughout the Americas. Genres might include but are not limited to literature, performance studies, film studies, and art. This collection comes out of our Critical Plant Studies Modern Language Association panels in 2021 and 2024. It has attracted interest from a university press, and we anticipate publishing through a university press.

Proposals might consider:

  1. Resistance: exploring how gardening and deploying plants in art, culture, and performance offer models of resistance for human crises like war, systemic racism, industrialized capitalism, unnatural disasters, and climate change. 
  2. Vitality: exploring how plant temporality, sentience, and mobility challenge philosophical, judicial, and ontological limits on current definitions of life and the right to exist across multiple categories of beings. 
  3. Sexuality: exploring the vast range of plant sexualities and reproductive modes which challenge contemporary and historical notions of the spectrum of sexual desire and experience. 
  4. “Invasive Species”: considering how colonization, decolonization, deforestation, the plantationocene, and histories of vegetal life connect to human histories and contiguities of slavery, anti-Blackness, and anti-Indigeneity. 
  5. Disability Studies and Plant Studies: Exploring atypicality and adaptations in humans and plants.

Please send proposals (300-500 words) and brief biographies (100 words) to Alicia Carroll (Auburn University) and Courtney Ryan (Lafayette College) at carroal@auburn.edu and crdram12@gmail.com by May 1, 2024. Collaborative proposals are welcome, and proposals from BIPOC scholars are encouraged. If accepted, completed chapters of 4,000-6,000 words will be due September 2, 2024. 

Call for Theatre Annual Editor

Call for Theatre Annual Editor

The American Theatre & Drama Society seeks applications for Editor of Theatre Annual, ATDS’s peer-reviewed journal. The position has a four-year term that includes a two-year training/learning period as Associate Editor to make the position more accessible and to maintain institutional memory.
 
Description of the Journal: 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: theatreannual.atds.org.
 
Editor Job Description: The successful applicant will join Theatre Annual’s editorial team in June 2024, serving as Associate Editor for the 2024 and 2025 issues; they will work closely with the Editor in preparing
issues for publication and learning the process. They will promote in August 2025 to serve as Editor for the 2026 and 2027 issues. In the final two years of their term, they will also begin the process of training the incoming Associate Editor.
 
The Editor is responsible for preparing one issue a year. This includes distributing a call for submissions; conducting anonymous peer review; carrying out production work; and liaising with contributors, the Associate
Editor, the editorial board, the Book Review Editor, the Managing Editor, and the publisher, the College of William & Mary. The Editor provides an annual report to ATDS at its ATHE Business Meeting that includes information from the College of William & Mary on the journal’s finances, subscriptions, and marketing, as well as numbers of received submissions and accepted articles, updates on special issues, and so forth). The Associate Editor will assist with these duties and copy editing. Both Editor and Associate Editor are encouraged to be active and visible scholars in the field. Workload varies throughout the year, but the Editor should expect to
devote approximately 80 hours to each issue, with more labor-intensive periods during peak submissions times, around major conferences, and amidst copy editing and production weeks. The Associate Editor should expect to devote 30-40 hours to each issue. The Associate Editor receives an annual stipend of $500; the Editor receives an annual stipend of $1500.
 
Though the application process is open to all interested individuals, it is expected that the Editor and Book Review Editor will maintain an ATDS membership in good standing while serving. ATDS currently offers Pay
What You Can membership: https://www.atds.org/membership-shop/.
 
Please send a cover letter describing your interest and experience (1 page) and a shortened CV (2 pages) —or any questions—to Dr. Peter Reed, Chair of the Theatre Annual Editor Search Committee, at preed@olemiss.edu by April 22, 2024. Search committee members include Michael Lueger, Benjamin Gillespie, Jocelyn Buckner, and Bess Rowen. 

2024 NEH Institute on Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing

Brown University Library is pleased to announce a call for applications for the 2024 NEH Institute on Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing which will occur this July. Thank you in advance for sharing the following call for applications widely with your networks. It is much appreciated. 

Call for Applications

Brown University Digital Publications invites applications for participation in an NEH Institute on Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities, Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps. The three-week hybrid Institute will take place virtually July 8–19 and in person at Brown University July 22–26, 2024. Participant travel, lodging, and per diem expenses will be covered for the in-person component.*

Purpose and Structure

 Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps supports scholars who wish to pursue interpretive projects that require digital expression and are intended for publication by a scholarly press, but who may lack resources and capacity at their home institutions.

Projects must be conceived of as born-digital, or digital-first. The institute does not support digitization projects or the development of supplemental websites for print books, but rather digital monographs, or digital publication projects anchored by an original, long-form narrative. The institute will train a cohort of 15 scholars—including unaffiliated scholars, adjunct professors, and part-time faculty from a range of disciplines, institution type, and geographical location—in best practices unique to the development of digital scholarly publications. The cohort will be supported by a faculty composed of authors of published or in-progress enhanced digital monographs and digital publishing experts from university presses and Brown University Digital Publications.

The institute has been organized as a hybrid, multi-phased training and mentoring program:

  • A two-week virtual course will introduce participants to resources, considerations, and strategies for digital publishing (July 8–19, 2024).
  • A one-week in-person workshop will yield individualized roadmaps for cohort projects (July 22–26, 2024).
  • Two two-day virtual check-ins will extend individualized project support (Oct. 2024 and Jan. 2025).

Eligibility

The application is open to scholars of all ranks, including university faculty and adjuncts, postdoctoral researchers, and independent scholars. Applicants must have a Ph.D.

Brown University Library is a member of the HBCU Library Alliance. Based on this affiliation, some slots will be reserved for participants from member institutions. 

International applicants are welcome, though the NEH Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities (IATDH) program focuses on scholars currently studying or employed at institutions in the United States. Thus, U.S. citizens and/or U.S.-based scholars will be given priority. International applicants and/or persons without a current U.S. visa should note that, if selected and if an in-person meeting is possible, a visa cannot be guaranteed.

How to Apply

The following materials should be sent to digitalpublishing@brown.edu, no later than April 1, 2024:

  • A statement (maximum 3 pages) that directly addresses the following questions:
    • Describe your digital monograph project. Why is the digital format necessary for advancing your argument? What is the current state of the project?
    • How would your project benefit from and contribute to a collaborative Institute experience?
    • How will your participation in the Institute contribute to expanding digital scholarship at your institution or in your field?
  • A current C.V.

Notification of Acceptance: May 1, 2024

JADT Calls for Editors and Submissions

Call for JADT Performance Review Editor (2024-2026)

The Journal of American Drama and Theatre is now accepting applications for the position of Performance Review Editor. Responsibilities include: commissioning reviews of theatre and performance in the Americas, broadly defined; answering queries about conducting reviews; and editing reviews for publication. The Performance Review Editor will serve a two-year term (with the possibility of renewal for two more years) beginning June 1, 2024 and ending May 31, 2026.

To apply, please email a letter of interest outlining your qualifications along with a current CV to jadtjournal@gmail.com. Applications are due by April 15, 2024.

Call for JADT Book Review Editor (2024-2026)

The Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT) is also accepting applications for the position of Book Review Editor. Responsibilities include: commissioning reviews of books relating to theatre and performance in/of the Americas, broadly defined; editing reviews; and establishing and maintaining relationships with book publishers. The Book Review Editor will serve a two-year term (with the possibility of renewal for two more years) beginning in June 1, 2024 and ending May 31, 2026.

JADT is peer-reviewed and published twice a year and affiliated with the American Theatre and Drama Society and The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

To apply, please email a letter of interest outlining your qualifications along with a current CV to jadtjournal@gmail.com. Applications are due by April 15, 2024.

Call for Papers, Book Reviews, and Performance Reviews

The editors of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre are now accepting submissions for essays on any topics relating to theatre, drama, and popular entertainments of the Americas for consideration. Please submit completed articles to jadtjournal@gmail.com by May 15, 2024 for consideration in the Fall 2024/Spring 2025 issues.

*NEW: Starting with our Spring 2024 issue, JADT will now be publishing performance reviews. If you are interested in publishing a performance review, please send a query email to the editors at jadtjournal@gmail.com.

To propose a book review, please email Book Review Editor Maya Roth at jadtbookreviews@gmail.com.

JADT’s aim is to promote research on theatre of the Americas and to encourage historical and theoretical approaches to plays, playwrights, performances, and popular theatre traditions. Studies of dramatic texts from a purely literary perspective are outside the scope of the journal. Manuscripts should be 6,000 to 8,000 words in length and prepared in conformity with the Chicago Manual of Style, using footnotes. Completed manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Word attachments via e-mail to jadtjournal@gmail.com using Microsoft Word. Articles will be peer reviewed, so please allow 3 to 4 months for a decision. If you are using images, please provide the images and captions with your submission. (Please Note: images should be at least 300dpi and authors are responsible for securing permissions before submission)

ABOUT JADT
Founded in 1989, JADT is a widely acclaimed peer-reviewed journal publishing thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas—past and present. The journal’s provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. JADT is fully online and freely accessible. https://www.thesegalcenter.org/jadt

Transnational Theatre Histories Book Series

Transnational Theatre Histories (Palgrave) illuminates vectors of cultural exchange, migration, appropriation, and circulation that long predate the more recent trends of neoliberal globalization. Books in the series document and theorize the emergence of theatre, opera, dance, and performance against backgrounds such as imperial expansion, technological development, modernity, industrialization, colonization, diplomacy, and cultural self-determination. Proposals are invited on topics such as: theatrical trade routes; public spheres through cross-cultural contact; the role of multi-ethnic metropolitan centers and port cities; modernization and modernity experienced in transnational contexts; new materialism: objects moving across borders and regions; migration and recombination of aesthetics and forms; colonization and decolonization as transnational projects; performance histories of cross- or inter-cultural contact; festivals, exchanges, partnerships, collaborations, and co-productions; diplomacy, state and extra-governmental involvement, support, or subversion; historical perspectives on capital, finance, and administration; processes of linguistic and institutional translation; translocality, glocality, transregional and omnilocal vectors; developing new forms of collaborative authorship.

Prospective authors are encouraged to reach out to any of the editors: Leo Cabranes-Grant; Christopher Balme; Tracy C. Davis; Marlis Schweitzer

Philadelphia Theatre Research Symposium 2024

Philadelphia Theatre Research Symposium 2024

Theatre as Catalyst for Liberation: Creativity Within Constraints Friday, May 3, 2024

The Philadelphia Theatre Research Symposium (PTRS) is seeking abstracts for the 2024 gathering of theater scholars and practitioners. We invite proposals for panels and roundtables for our in-person conference at Villanova University this May. This year’s theme is “Theatre as Catalyst for Liberation: Creativity Within Constraints,” which asks us to think about how theatre practice and non-traditional storytelling forms are connected to liberation – (Black Liberation specifically in the case of NBT), freeing ourselves, our ideas, and others. Theatre as a form and craft teaches us how to be creative within constraints, inviting discussions of not only what our narratives are, but also how the processes by which they are created are honed and crystalized for impact. This becomes even more important when ideological, aesthetic, political, and financial limitations are continual pressures that center “traditional” western ideology (inclusive of colonialism, capitalism and co-option/appropriation) in the current global theatre landscape. These topics will be explored in a keynote address by National Black Theatre’s (NBT) Chief Executive Officer, Sade Lythcott, and Executive Artistic Director, Jonathan McCrory, as well as in their workshop on Holistic Producing: Decolonizing the Western Frame.

We invite proposals for individual papers or roundtables on topics that could include, but are not limited to:

  • Artivism: Artists & Art making and fighting for social change
  • Applied Indigenous practices in theatre making
  • Applied theatre
  • Community theatre (as in theatre for community-building)
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility models
  • Experimental / Avant Garde theatre and/or producing
  • Liberatory theatre making (playwrights, companies, productions that liberate)
  • Storytelling for new audiences
  • Teaching methods for liberation
  • Theatre of and for the Global Majority
  • Theatre of the Oppressed (as a tool for teaching, making performance, community organizing)

How to Submit:

Please submit a 250-word abstract for a 15-minute presentation to Bess Rowen at bess.rowen@villanova.edu along with a 100-word biography, including your current affiliation, by March 3, 2024. Please also include: the paper’s title, the presenter’s name, affiliation, and email address.

Revenge is Mad Hard: Fat Ham and the Question of Cultural Reclamation

Revenge is Mad Hard:
Fat Ham and the Question of Cultural Reclamation

Since its digital debut in April of 2021, subsequent Pulitzer win, off-Broadway run, Broadway run, and recent flurry of regional productions, Fat Ham has taken North America by storm. In re-framing the story of Hamlet from within a Black, southern family barbeque, playwright James Ijames has opened the door for questions about cultural authority, the exchange of cultural capital, mediation, storytelling and adaptation methods, the need for increased representation in canonical stories, the methods through which marginalized voices might reclaim cultural capital, and more.

This essay collection will explore these timely questions. We seek short, thesis-driven essays that consider Fat Ham’s early life (from its Spring 2021 digital debut at the Wilma, to its present regional run). Essays may address a broad range of topics including, but not limited to: Fat Ham as a performance phenomenon, adaptation/appropriation, language, Black storytelling, queerness, mediation, cultural capital, canon, contemporary Shakespeare studies, etc.

To submit, please send a 250-word abstract and your bio to the editors by March 1. Because the topic of this collection is timely, we will be working on a collapsed timeline. We hope that authors will consider this when submitting. Chapters will be 5,000 – 6,000 words in length, with first drafts due by June 1. The editors welcome any questions or queries authors might have; please contact us: Valerie.Pye@liu.edu , drosvall@buffalo.edu

Valerie Clayman Pye is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Arts Management at Long Island University, Post. Valerie’s research focuses on actor training pedagogy, Shakespeare’s Globe, Shakespeare tourism, and on practice-as-research (PaR). Her book, Unearthing Shakespeare: Embodied Performance and the Globe (Routledge) considers how the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theatre contributes to actor training and the performances of Shakespeare’s plays. She is the co-editor of Objectives, Obstacles, and Tactics in Practice: Perspectives on Activating the Actor (with Hillary Haft Bucs), and Shakespeare and Tourism (with Robert Ormsby). Her essays have appeared in Shakespeare, Teaching Shakespeare, PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and several essay collections. Her latest book is Innovation & Digital Theatremaking: Rethinking Theatre with ‘The Show Must Go Online’ (with co-author Robert Myles) (Routledge 2023). 

Danielle Rosvally is an assistant professor of theatre at the University at Buffalo. Her forthcoming monograph (Theatres of Value: Buying and Selling Shakespeare in Nineteenth-Century New York City, State University of New York Press, 2024) considers the commodification and economization of Shakespeare’s work in America’s nineteenth century. Danielle’s interest in the digital has fueled past work on database methodologies in humanist text, social media, and the personification of Shakespeare by performers/users. Her next project, Yassified Shakespeare (co-authored with Trevor Boffone), is a multimedia exploration of how iterations of Shakespearean performance and Shakespeare’s cultural capital critically intersect with drag and drag aesthetics. She is a dramaturge, actor, director, and fight director.

Black Theatre Review Submissions for July 2024

the Black Theatre Review (tBTR) is now accepting submissions for our fifth publication, 
Vol. 2 No. 2, to be published in July 2024.
 
“They didn’t bring the hum; they didn’t bring the leader-call, they didn’t bring the field hollers, because they didn’t know them…. the hum, the holler, the leader-call are women things.” Nikki Giovanni,, Black Women Writers at Work


tBTR is pleased to accept submissions for its fifth publication, Vol. 3 No. 1, to be published July 2024 online. We invite authors to reflect on the theme of nurturing.

On January 11th I learned of the tragic death of Dr. Antoinette “Bonnie” Candia-Bailey on January 8, 2024, nine months after assuming the role of VP of Student Affairs at Lincoln University of Missouri. The self-reported causes of her death were employment-related “harm and mental damage” and being “intentionally harassed and bullied”. News of her loss comes days after Dr. Claudine Gay resigned from Harvard University on January 2, 2024. In her resignation letter Dr. Gay writes, “These last weeks have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.”

The day following the news of Dr. Candia-Bailey, like many mornings before, I heard the reveille heralding from the nearby air base as I worked. Work is often how I navigate grief and I was grieving for her family and for those in the world who would never get to hear her, metaphorical, finished song. I did not know her personally, but I recognized her disregarded cries for help in addressing workplace discrimination. In the middle of this work-grief continuum, I am reflecting on what Black women often experience in Higher Education in terms of the lack of compassion and respect, and bias and hate from the classroom to the boardroom. How do we stay on our respective paths forward in the academy (or carve new paths) with joy in the face of these circumstances? In When Will the Joy Come: Black Women in the Ivory Tower (2023) editors Chapdelaine, Thompson, and Asare argue that it is through the potential of joy, writing that:

“Joy is a matter of autonomy, agency, and community…found in moments of connection, and reclamation that each scholar seeks, still, despite the alienating systems through which [Black women] journey…it is [our] well-being and thriving…and it is not something we are willing to relinquish despite the context of our lives and labor” (14-15).

In this precarious moment, my own search for joy led me to the above epithet of Nikki Giovanni and the image of Baby Suggs holy ministering to the people through her services in the woods in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In both examples, the weeping of our eyes, the laugh in our throat, the song in our blood, the dance of our limbs, and the drum in our hearts were the curative and nourishing response to the weight of dehumanization and death. Here and elsewhere, Black women lead the call for the expressivity which nurtures, enlivens, and brings joy to the people in times of need.
 
Vol. 3 No.1 is a Reveille, or “the hum, the holler, [and] the leader-call” which asks scholars, artists, and lovers of Black theatre and Black expressivity to identify, interrogate, and investigate elements of nurturing among Black women in Black and African Diasporic theatre history, dramatic literature, performance and production, digital art, artistic leadership, pedagogy, and praxis. We invite authors to investigate, reflect on, and illuminate:
  • Theory and practice-based approaches to theatre making, artistic leadership, theatre pedagogy, and theatrical developments by, for, and about Black women that reflect an ethic of care and engender joy.
  • Elements and rituals within Black theatre and Black expressivity that can nourish, sustain, buoy, and uplift Black women.
  • Strategies and practices for monitoring and navigating emotional wellbeing, maintaining agency and authenticity, and emboldening and supporting Black women theatre artists, faculty, and administrators in maneuvering difficult matters in learning environments.
  • Contemporary profiles of Black women leaders and art makers in the field of Black theatre or Black expressivity that hear the Reveille and through their work inspire us to exist with joy and give us life for the work ahead.
  • Digital art and/or performance about how Black women nurture themselves and others.
  • Africana womanism, Black feminism, and/or epistemologies of Black womanness in Black theatre or Black expressivity.

The last date for submissions is March 1, 2024. Early submissions will, however, receive preference in the review and publication process. Revision or Acceptance Notification is April 5, 2024 (with any subsequent revisions due by May 3, 2024). Please upload your full manuscript on our website. 

Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green, MFA
Editor-In-Chief
 
Michelle Cowin Gibbs, PhD
Managing Editor

Journal of Consent-Based Performance Special Issue

The Journal of Consent-Based Performance is calling for papers for the upcoming special issue “Consent is an Access Issue: Rethinking Disability, Accessibility, and Consent-Based Theatre Practices.” This issue is guest edited by Dr. Catherine (Katya) Vrtis, scholar of disability and theatre, current Accessibility Officer for the Mid-America Theatre Festival, and the Co-Founder and inaugural Chair of the Disability, Theatre, and Performance Focus Group for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
 
We highly encourage all artists, educators, and researchers working at the intersection of disability studies, crip theory, and theatre and performance to submit papers for this special issue.
 
JCBP is accepting submissions through March 31, 2024. The full text of the CFP and directions for submission can be found here: https://journals.calstate.edu/jcbp/announcement/view/34.

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