Conference announcements and calls for papers

Blast from the Past: Histories and Memories in Popular Performance
13th October 2012
University of Chichester

Call for Papers

The PoP [Performances of the Popular] Moves committee is now inviting submissions for the 2012 conference, “Blast from the Past: Histories and Memories in Popular Performance ”.

The popular is frequently associated with the present, with cultural forms that are current and have currency. And yet, at the fifth anniversary of PoP Moves (formerly, Popular Dance and Music Matters), we find ourselves looking back and considering the popular in relation to time, histories and memories. Submissions are invited in any area of popular performance research, but we particularly seek those addressing historical questions.

What historical traces are left by popular performances?
How has the notion of the popular shifted over time?
Can the popular dancing body be conceived as an archive and/or a repertoire?
What role do popular performances play in constructing cultural, social, and bodily memory?
How is the past made present (and absent) in contemporary popular performance forms?
What contribution can historical research make to the teaching of popular dance studies and popular dance studies to the teaching of dance history and history more generally?
How can we construct methodologies for researching popular performance histories?
How can embodiment and creation help us investigate the popular past?

Programming Committee: Professor Theresa Buckland, Dr Melissa Blanco Borelli, Dr Ann David, Dr Mary Fogarty, Dr Joanna Hall, Dr Clare Parfitt-Brown, and Dr Danielle Robinson

How to apply

Please send the following information by 15th May 2012 via e.mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it :

Document One: Title, Abstract, and Bibliography (see Proposals below)
Document Two: Title, Presenter’s Name, Affiliated Institution, Email Address, space and time requirements (if relevant) and AVS needs (see Technical Requirements and Resources below) Proposals
An abstract of 300 words is required, outlining the research area and key issues within a clearly articulated methodology
An indicative bibliography of 4.5 key texts should be included
The name of the speaker and the title of the paper should also be included in a separate document as the abstracts will be blind reviewed

Technical Requirements and Resources

Presentations may take the form of a paper, lecture-demonstration or workshop
Paper presentations should be 20 minutes in length
Lecture-demonstrations and workshops can be 45 or 90 minutes in length
If speakers intend to present a lecture-demonstration or workshop, please indicate what your time and space requirements might be for this
Please identify any AVS equipment that you might need for the presentation: DVD playback, data projector, or internet access, for example

Conference Organisers: Dr Clare Parfitt-Brown and Dr Danielle Robinson
Conference Location: University of Chichester, College Lane, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6PE, UK

Call For Papers
Dance Under Construction Conference
April 13–14, 2012
Hosted by the Department of Dance, University of California, Riverside

Deadline for submitting proposals: February 24, 2012

Re-imagining Archives in Motion

Conference Description

Dance Under Construction (DUC) is an interdisciplinary forum for presenting graduate student work theorizing dance, performance, and the body. It originated as an initiative of the graduate students of UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures and has been hosted by various UC campuses. DUC has grown to an annual student-run event for dance and performance scholars, as well as those in related disciplines. Designed for the development of intellectual inquiry in a supportive and rigorous environment, the conference offers students a chance to explore through experimental modes of research and performance. This interdisciplinary event provides a rare and important discursive space for the stimulation and presentation of cutting-edge research in topics related to the body as a site of cultural identification.

Keynote Speaker Announcement

We are thrilled to announce that Susan Manning, Professor of English, Theater, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University, will be our Keynote Speaker. Her address is titled "Archives in Collision" and will focus on how discrepancies, gaps, and conflict between different archives (oral, historical, print, visual and embodied) often provide historical illumination. The keynote speech will take place in the early evening of Saturday, April 14, 2012.

Participants are also invited to attend the keynote address of the UCR English Department Graduate Student Conference, (dis)junctions, titled "Narratives Mediated," which is taking place on the same weekend. The keynote speaker is Dr. Leo Braudy of the University of Southern California Department of English. His address will take place at 5:00 pm on Friday, April 13, 2012.

Call for Papers and Proposals

"The archive" may evoke a concrete collection of books, articles, and mircofilm contained within a library or museum, yet digital media have allowed remote access to archives to become increasingly commonplace. At the same time, several legal systems have begun to recognize indigenous song and dance as legal evidence, highlighting what performers have known all along—that performance is also a way to archive and analyze the human experience. A nearmythic topic in dance research assigned with as much scholarly primacy as perplexity, "the archive" and theoretical notions thereof continue to complicate methods and modes of dance inquiry concerned with records of the past.

Charged with the task to shape the contours of dance studies documentation and discourse, this graduate student conference seeks to explore constantly changing notions of the archive. Through paper presentations, performances, workshops, and working groups, the conference will probe the relationship between source materials and uses of them, trouble the dichotomy between written and performed work, and re-imagine scholars' and performers' interactions with repositories of information.

We encourage participants to think about the many forms that an archive could take, whether digital, embodied, in memory, or in daily life, and to consider how each of these archival manifestations impact "the" archive. Can the archive be enacted or performed or must it be tangible and stable? How can the acts of performing and archiving interrelate? How are identity politics tied to archival creation and use? How do live performances change (or what remains) when they are documented and archived? How has digitization impacted the permanence of archives, and how are these new digital archives policed?

Proposals might address the following issues/questions:

access to archives and issues of power
issues of copyright and performance
re-imagining “the” archive
how archives can be used and enacted
issues of permanence, ephemerality, and instability in archives
nostalgia and the archive
memory as a form of archive
capturing the live performance
bodily archives
reconstructing dances from archival materials
body politics of archives and archival work
economic aspects to archival work—both access to and creation of archives
regulating the digital archive
issues of translation, whether cultural, linguistic, or otherwise

We invite broad and innovative interpretations of the conference theme through papers and performances. Work that utilizes and/or analyzes multiple mediums such as dance, film, text, and other performance genres is encouraged. Proposals for panels, working groups, workshops, and roundtable discussions are especially welcome. We would like this conference to be an opportunity for graduate students to come together, collaborate, form connections, and receive feedback on their work, regardless of the state of their research. It is understood that all of the research presented will be, in some sense, in progress. DUC aspires to foster a community and network of support for dancers and scholars, so please come excited to talk about your work and to engage with the work of others.

Guidelines for Submitting Proposals

To apply, submit an abstract (250-300 words) of your paper, performance, or project. Please include your full name, contact information, institutional affiliation, brief biography (approximately 100 words), and indicate all technological and space requirements. Specify in your application whether a performance space or classroom setting would best suit your work, and please plan not to exceed a time limit of 20 minutes for a presentation or performance or up to one hour for each working group or workshop. Applications should be submitted in .pdf format to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by February 24, 2012. A confirmation email will be sent upon receiving your proposal.

Please title the subject line of your application e-mail as follows: DUC Proposal – (Your Last Name) – (Your presentation type, e.g. "Paper Presentation" / "Performance" / "Workshop" / "Working Group")

An applicant may submit ONLY ONE proposal for ONE of the presentation categories described above.

There will be a registration fee of $25 to present at or attend the conference.

Stay tuned for more information concerning registration, lodging and airfare, and other DUCrelated activities happening at UC-Riverside that weekend.

A Call for Research Articles
to be published in Dance Chronicle: Studies In Dance And The Related Arts

Dance Critics and Criticism

Dance, performed, calls for response. While each observer can react to a work, form judgments, and make choices about it, the professional critic has emerged as an articulate voice of experience, taste, advocacy, censure, and partisanship. Trends in dance such as “fusion” forms and global dissemination of dances and styles create challenges as well as opportunities for critical response.

We invite research submissions to a special issue of Dance Chronicle devoted to the theme, “Dance Critics and Criticism,” to be edited by Lynn Matluck Brooks and Joellen A. Meglin. Papers might address such subjects as those listed below and other topics proposed by authors:

How has the work of any particular critic shaped the discourse and dance presentation of his or her time?
Have certain artists or works provoked significant or unusual critical response? Does dance criticism itself provoke response? If so, from whom? What form does that response take?
What motivations and interests have directed dance criticism in different times and places? What might particular histories of dance criticism reveal about dance as art and as cultural phenomenon?
What makes dance criticism meaningful? Have particular aesthetic theories or schools of thought been associated with certain critics or approaches to dance criticism?
Are distinct critical perspectives applicable to particular kinds of dance, or are there “constants,” even a “unified field” of critical theory, for all? Are there (should there be?) as many theories of criticism as there are forms of dance?
How have dance critics grappled with responding to artworks originating in cultures other than their own?
How are social media and the Internet effecting changes in dance criticism? What are the implications of these changes?

Authors may wish to consider Taylor & Francis’s capacity of publishing material electronically concurrently with the printed version, so that readers can follow digital recordings of music and dance (examples) referred to in the article text. All manuscripts will receive double blind peer review. Submissions will be accepted at any time before August 15, 2012. Send manuscripts or inquiries to Lynn Matluck Brooks at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Joellen Meglin at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Style and formatting guidelines are available as “Instructions for Authors” at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0147-2526&linktype=44.

Roman Comedy in Performance

An NEH Summer Institute for College and University Faculty, "Roman Comedy in Performance," will be held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina from June 24th through July 20th, 2012. Co-directed by Professors Sharon L. James (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Timothy J. Moore (University of Texas at Austin), the NEH Summer Institute will give NEH Summer Scholars (twenty-two university or college faculty members and three graduate students) the opportunity to discuss the performance practice and social significance of Roman Comedy with leading experts in the field and to practice scholarship through performance, producing their own performances of scenes from the plays of Plautus and Terence. The NEH Summer Scholars for this Institute will include non-classicists as well as classicists, and no knowledge of Latin is required. Participants will receive a stipend of $3,300. Applications are due by March 1, 2012.

For more information, consult http://nehsummer2012romancomedy.web.unc.edu/ or write to either co-director: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

British Dance Institutions: Past, Present and Future

A one-day conference curated by London Studio Centre and the University of Roehampton to launch SDR’s 30th anniversary celebrations on Saturday 19th May 2012 at University of Roehampton, London SW15

Launched in 1982, the Society for Dance Research is dedicated to the promotion and support of high quality dance scholarship that encompasses the diversity and range of dance cultures, those based in the UK especially. In recognition of this landmark year marking the Society’s 30th anniversary and of London’s hosting of the Olympics and allied cultural events, this conference explores the proliferation of British dance institutions and the diversity and vibrancy of the UK dance sector. We therefore invite individual papers or joint panel presentations that address, analyse, and probe this dynamic thematic area.

Areas for papers to consider may include, but are not restricted to, the following:

the birth of British dance institutions and/or the emergence of a UK-based dance ecology
the impact of British dance institutions within national contexts and/or as part of transnational collaborations
the role of British dance institutions within a globalised cultural economy
beyond the dance organisation: dance within other UK cultural organisations
the management, curation, and archiving of dance in the UK
staging UK dance: the role of the dance venue
theorising the British dance institution in the twenty-first century

Presenters should feel free to address these areas through exploration of specific case study examples and/or by adopting a more thematic approach.

Conference committee:

Dr Henrietta Bannerman; Dr Stacey Prickett; Dr Vicki Thoms; Lise Uytterhoeven; Professor Margaret McGowan and Dr Richard Ralph

Abstracts for 15-minute individual papers or themed panel presentations (of 3 papers each) are invited. Please submit electronically a 300-word abstract with accompanying indicative bibliography. On a separate document please provide your name and contact details to enable blind peer review of abstract submissions. Proposals for joint panel presentations should submit an abstract for each of the three papers and indicate that these form part of a themed panel.

Closing date for receipt of abstract submissions: 15th February, 2012. These should be emailed to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Conference proceedings will be published online and there will also be the opportunity to submit expanded versions of papers for consideration as part of peer review publication. In order to present an accepted paper you must be a member of the Society for Dance Research.

Call for papers
Contemporary Dance Didactics: Explorations in Theory and Practice.
A Conference with workshops and working groups at DOCH, 28–31 October, 2012

You are invited to submit abstracts on 200–250 words in English.

State in what form you would like to present your proposal, as a paper, a lecture demonstration or a round table discussion as well as what language you wish to use. The conference languages are English and Scandinavian.

State your professional title (for example: researcher at a university, senior lecturer/associate professor, doctoral student or other).

The conference’s three different but partly overlapping themes are: Theoretical aspects of dance didactics/teaching and learning. Practical aspects that answer the question “how is it done?” Dance education in a social context. For example dance pedagogy and gender, dance for young people and community dancing.

Proposals should be e-mailed to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it before the 26th of February 2012. Late admittances will not be accepted.

The full call for paper-invitation is available via a link at http://www.doch.se/web/Call_for_presentations_and_Registration.aspx.

The conference homepage is www.doch.se/CLOSEENCOUNTERS.

If you have any questions, please contact Conference Coordinator Kay Artle: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Call for Papers: PSFG/ATHE 2012 Emerging Scholars Panel

The Performance Studies Focus Group (PSFG) at the Association of Theater in Higher Education (ATHE) conference invites submissions of papers for its Emerging Scholars' Panel. The theme of the conference is “Performance as/is Civic Engagement: Advocate, Collaborate, Educate,” and it will take place at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., August 2-5, 2012.

The PSFG Emerging Scholars’ Panel is an opportunity for researchers to present their work at a major international conference at the outset of their career. Selected Emerging Scholars will be paired with a mentor from the field of Performance Studies who will offer critical feedback on submitted papers in preparation for the conference. Successful applicants will receive a $100 stipend to offset the cost of attending the conference, as well as complimentary registration to the ATHE PSFG pre-conference.

Located at the boundaries and intersections of scholarly and artistic practice, Performance Studies theorizes and analyzes embodied practices and events, and explores the ways in which performance creates meaning and shapes social life. In anticipation of the approaching presidential election and the uncertain future of the occupy movement, this year’s conference focuses on the political implications of performance. We invite submissions that consider the possibility of advocacy and civic engagement through the study and practice of performance. Might performance disrupt/reinforce hegemonic structures? Does performance as civic engagement necessarily have to participate in the process of nation building? What opportunities exist for transnational civic engagement and collectivity? How might we trace the genealogy of performative politics in the United States and beyond?

Submissions to the PSFG Emerging Scholars Panel may engage these questions generated by the conference theme, or relate to issues raised by Performance Studies more broadly. Papers across performance modes and historical periods are welcome. Topics may include:

contested boundaries between performance, theater, and other art forms
performance as a modality of (historical) knowledge and memory
mediatization and performance
historiographical approaches to performance
performance, institutions, and modern forms of power
performance as an insurgent practice/discipline
negotiating and building identity through performance
performance as a mode of subjection and/or resistance
performative strategies of the avant-garde
conflict, confrontation, and dissensus in the performance encounter
performativity and theatricality
efficacy and affect in performance
embodiment and technological culture
complexity, ambiguity, and paradox in performance

Papers for the PSFG Emerging Scholars’ panel should be 8-10 double-spaced pages in length. The deadline for submission is Monday, February 13, 2012. Please send completed papers (as attachments in Microsoft Word), with institutional affiliation and contact information, to Gillian Young at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Successful applicants will be notified by the end of March 2012.

Please contact Gillian with any other questions regarding the PSFG Emerging Scholars’ panel at the email address above.

Oxford Annual Dance Symposium at New College, University of Oxford.

An annual meeting for scholars and practitioners to discuss aspects of court and theatre dance, including music, performance practice, social and literary links during the long eighteenth century, organised by Michael Burden and Jennifer Thorp. For more details, lists of publications arising from the symposia, and calls for papers for the upcoming symposium, see the symposium website http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/dance-symposium.

Blast from the Past: Histories and Memories in Popular Performance 13th October 2012 University of Chichester