Call for Proposals
The Society of Dance History Scholars Annual Conference
Stanford and San Francisco, California June 19-22, 2009
Proposal deadline: November 1, 2008

          "Topography" derives from the 15th century Middle English "topographie," or Late Latin "topographia," a description of a place, from "topographein" to describe a place, from "topos" place + graphein "to write" or "to carve."
          • The art or practice of graphic delineation in detail usually on maps or charts of natural and built features of a place or region especially in a way to show their relative positions and elevations
          • The schema of a structural entity, as of the mind, a field of study, or society, reflecting a division into distinct areas having a specific relation or a specific position relative to one another.
          terrain, geographical features, topography

The Society of Dance History Scholars invites submissions for its 2009 conference, "Topographies: Sites, Bodies, and Technologies" to be held at Stanford University and venues in the San Francisco Bay Area, June 19-22, 2009. SDHS welcomes scholars and artists from across the globe to join us in moving through both historical and present "topographies" of dance. What happens when the place and space of bodies becomes an organizing discourse for dance making and research?

Topographies enforce and re-inscribe the boundaries of our lives and our planet, but only for a moment because space shifts, sites move, bodies drift, codes slip, and time vanishes. In a topographic map, what goes un-measured? Can we imagine different, even fantastic geographies of movement and exchange? If new algorithms are undoing and redoing both the known and the unknown of sites and bodies, how could dance inform this volatile topography of motion? We invite you to join us in a physical encounter with sites and bodies as sites in motion and transformation.

The following are possible areas of focus that will mark and organize our gathering.We hope they encourage new ways of thinking and encountering bodily knowledges. Proposals on all areas of dance and body-based performance research are welcome and encouraged.

Corporeal Mappings

Site-Specificity and Site-Specific Works

Choreographing Technologies

Choreography in Local and Transnational Sites

Surveying History

This conference will continue to explore new formats for presentations, performance/presentations, and open dialogues. We will continue the between-session-interludes, which encouraged informal encounters across disciplines, theories and practices.

Other Topographies: Out-of-Site

To extend our artist/scholar dialogues, we will hold one day of presentations, roundtables, and performances at particular venues in the Bay Area, such as the ODC Dance Commons, Counterpulse, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We will move our conferencing through the topographies that mark the dance of the northern California bay and coastal regions. We would like to extend special thanks to Mrs. Alfred S. Wilsey for supporting the 2009 SDHS Conference.

Proposal Formats

We encourage proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables. We will also consider alternate formats such as seminars, topic-specific research groups, reading groups, forums, workshops dance inventions or interventions, demonstrations, or formats you may propose that rethink the standard conventions for presenting both scholarship and choreography. We stress the involvement of the dance community and all participants in the infrastructure of the creation and staging of dances. We invite artists and scholar/artists to make works-in-progress that we could encounter together; We invite engineers, scientists, and media artists to join us and present on their work in new media and technologies of motion. Interdisciplinary artists and researchers who experiment with motion, design, and/or corporeal studies are welcome to submit panels, papers, and roundtables. We hope to also have screenings of dance on film and experimental dance media works.

Topographies Committee Members

Please note the deadline for proposals is November 1, 2008. Proposal forms and submission details are on our website at www.sdhs.org. Address all conference proposal questions to Katherine Mezur , kmezur@sbcglobal.net. We look forward to meeting you in 2009 in California.

Graduate Awards and Grants for 2009

In recognition of Selma Jeanne Cohen's great contributions to dance history, the Society of Dance History Scholars inaugurated an award in her name at its 1995 conference. The Selma Jeanne Cohen Award aims to encourage graduate student members of SDHS by recognizing excellence in dance scholarship. Up to three awards will be offered at each conference. Each award includes an invitation to present a paper at the annual conference, waiver of the registration fee for that conference, and a grant to help defray costs of attending the conference. Awards are based on the originality of the research, the rigor of the argument, and the clarity of the writing.

Papers submitted in competition for a Selma Jeanne Cohen Award must be based on unpublished research or interpretation and must be designed for oral delivery within twenty minutes, including use of audiovisual aids. (Papers running eight double-spaced pages are ideal.)

Students interested in applying for the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award should follow the regular guidelines for conference submission and check the appropriate box on the submission form. If proposals are accepted by the program committee, a full-text version of the paper will be due by 15 March 2009 at the SDHS Office. The full-text version should be sent via email to sdhs@primemanagement.net.

The Society of Dance History Scholars offers Graduate Student Travel Grants, aimed at encouraging broad graduate student participation in its annual conference. Each year three grants will be made to graduate students to help defray the costs of attending the annual conference. Applications for the next round of Graduate Student Travel Grants are due at the SDHS office by 15 March 2009. Please download the application form from www.sdhs.org. Although postal submissions may be sent to the SDHS office at 3416 Primm Lane, Birmingham AL 35216, email submissions to sdhs@primemanagement.net are strongly encouraged.

Any student member of SDHS enrolled in a graduate degree program and engaged in dance research is eligible. Students need not have a paper accepted for presentation at the conference in order to apply. Although applications from students presenting papers are encouraged, applications from students interested in attending a Working Group or simply listening and learning also are welcome. In all cases, applicants must persuade the evaluation committee that attending the conference will further their research. There is no presumption that presenting, participating in a Working Group, or simply attending is the most grant-worthy application.

Individuals are eligible to receive a Graduate Student Travel Grant only once during their graduate career. Although student members of SDHS may apply for the Travel Grant and the Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize or Gertrude Lippincott Prize in the same year, they may not accept both a travel grant and a prize in the same year. Applicants must be current (paid-up) members of SDHS at the time of applying for the Graduate Student Travel Grant. Contact the SDHS accounts manager at sdhs@primemanagement.net to verify membership status.

For additional information on these grants and other awards, consult the SDHS website at www.sdhs.org.

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Last updated 20 May 2008
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