“Thinking, Learning, Dreaming: Performance Philosophy Pedagogy”

Call for Papers: Performance Studies Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), 2014 Conference – Scottsdale, AZ, July 24-27

In collaboration with ATHE’s Performance Studies Focus Group (PSFG), the international research network known as Performance Philosophy seeks papers from scholars exploring intersections between performance philosophy and pedagogy.

In articulating their “dreams” for the 2014 conference, ATHE invites us “to take inspiration from the desert to consider how performance dreams forth the possible from the impossible, offering opportunities for refuge, resistance, resilience and renewal.” Among the many situations in which we find ourselves struggling to dream forth the possible from the impossible, education stands out as one of the most troublesome. With growing class sizes and shrinking faculty sizes, the wholesale institutionalization of quantitative assessment, the push toward distance learning, and other evidence of the neoliberalist financialization of education, the liberal tenets that have long underwritten education are facing unique challenges, but also unique opportunities. Performance Philosophy and PSFG invite submissions from scholars interested in theorizing, clarifying, responding to, or otherwise exploring this complexity. More specifically, we invite submissions that conduct this exploration through any of the contexts of the field of Performance Philosophy.

Understood not as a “turn” in the fields of theatre or performance studies but, rather, as a new field in its own right, involving researchers based in a wide range of disciplines, Performance Philosophy presents the possibility of thinking theatre and performance anew, against the backdrop of current philosophical debates. Under the auspices of PSFG, Performance Philosophy hopes to organize a session (or multiple sessions) of papers that will springboard into a proposal for a special issue of Theatre Topics dedicated to “Performance Philosophy and Pedagogy.” The further hope is that the special issue would be published in 2015, more or less contemporaneous with Performance Philosophy’s own international conference.

While all submissions must intersect with debates, issues, developments, and/or practices of pedagogy, they may approach this from any of a number of different trajectories. Topics for papers might include:

• Philosophical approaches or challenges to the theatre history sequence
• Experiments within core classes of theatre and performance curricula rooted in specific philosophical principles
• Schemes for hybrid practice/theory classes (perhaps aligning with practice as research methodologies popular in the UK)
• The pick up or contestation of the provocations made in the recent work of performance philosophy scholars such as Laura Cull, Freddie Rokem, Martin Puchner, Bojana Kunst, Maaike Bleeker, or Andrew Bowie (to name but a few)

Submissions may extend from conceptual themes already being treated by the Performance Philosophy interest groups (see performancephilosophy.ning.com), or submissions may bring new issues to the performance philosophy table. Submissions may even treat targeted cases of pedagogy that present important implications for and from performance philosophy.

Submissions:

Send a 500-word abstract that outlines the research project and the special connection to performance philosophy to both Wade Hollingshaus (wadeh@byu.edu) and Will Daddario (wdaddar@ilstu.edu). Email as either a Word .doc or .docx.

Eventual paper lengths are expected to be 15-20 minutes.

Deadline for abstract submission: 

October 15, 2013.