Call for Papers:
“Genealogies & Performance”
Due by September 1, 2026, to be published as a special issue (69.1) of Theatre Survey in
January 2028.
This special issue will explore the limits and potentials of a genealogical approach in theatre and performance historiography, inviting scholars to reflect on “genealogy” as a methodology and to consider the genealogies of their own critical approaches. It fosters conversations between models of theatre history that prevailed in the field at the turn of the millennium and contemporary methodological orientations that expand, perturb, and critique these historiographic methods.
In the last three decades of theatre and performance scholarship, the Foucauldian concept of “genealogy” has generated modes of theorizing history that challenge power structures, teleological paradigms, and ostensibly ahistorical concepts. Beginning with works by Shannon Jackson and Joseph Roach, and continuing into more recent scholarship by Uri McMillan and Amelia Jones, among others, “genealogy” tends to be used by scholars interested in historiographic methods that cross borders of time, geography, discipline, and genre to find new associations. Its use has proved especially effective for scholars working to recover the voices of historically marginalized people and place them in an expanded field of historical discourse and connection. “Genealogy” has now become so ubiquitous in our field that its deployment typically no longer requires citation or definition. The term has perhaps even begun to take on the kind of ahistorical pose that Foucault sought to disrupt through a genealogical mode of historiography.
Submissions might address:
What are the limits of critical genealogical approaches and what methodological interventions might they foreclose?
What unexplored potentials or affordances might genealogy still hold for the field of theatre and performance studies?
What other terminologies or methodologies have become so ubiquitous in our field as to appear ahistorical, and what systems might tracing their genealogies disrupt?
What are some genealogies of genealogy itself? How has the term developed, transformed, and been contested over the years since Nietzsche and later Foucault popularized it in the critical lexicon.
This special issue will be edited by Debra Caplan, Kellen Hoxworth, and Elliott Turley. We welcome essays of 4,000 to 6,000 words focused on sustained methodological reflections.
Essays may briefly describe case studies pertinent to the project but should emphasize targeted interventions relating to genealogy and historiographic methodology.
The CFP is available online: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/56992/information/calls.pdf. For more information about submission, visit:https://www.astr.org/page/TS_Submission_Guide.
Authors should submit via ScholarOne (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatresurvey) by September 1, 2026.
If this deadline is not possible due to extenuating circumstances, please contact Debra Caplan to inquire about a possible extension. She welcomes questions and inquiries at debra.caplan@baruch.cuny.edu.