[ecrea] ASTR CFP Dancing on the Edge

Abstracts are invited for a working session at the annual conference for 
the American Society for Theatre Research, held in Baltimore, MD 
November 20-23.


Dancing on the Edge: The 
Queer/Techno/Digital/Cyborg/Post/Present/Material/Effervescent Body

Conveners: Jessica Berson (Independent Scholar) and Kirsten Pullen 
(Texas A&M University)

>From two robotic vacuums performing Beckett to Stelarc’s 
electronically controlled suspension performances to tweens 
enthusiastically Wii-dancing, boundaries between embodied, disembodied, 
and virtual dance continue to blur. While technology makes it possible 
for non-humans to perform and especially to dance, the embodied 
ephemerality so central to many definitions of performance seems to 
disappear. How do we dance on the edge of the material, the embodied, 
the real, and the human? Clearly, the conference theme of the post-human 
poses particular quandaries for dance and movement scholars: we often 
find ourselves trying to steer conversation to the more human, toward 
the fundamental and underwritten phenomena of embodiment. But at the 
same time, the questions implicit in the theme productively trouble our 
ideas about the meanings and mechanics of embodiment in performance.

Moving away from questions of embodiment qua embodiment, this working 
session invites participants to investigate questions of the virtual and 
the human and the material and the digital body through a wide range of 
potential sites, including dance, performance art, screendance, visual 
art, web-based performance, and video games. Papers that address these 
or other, related questions, are especially welcome.

    * How do contemporary technologies challenge our sense of the 
material realities of the body?
    * What happens to the immediacy of embodied experience when it 
becomes implicated in digitization and virtuality?
    * What can considerations of the post-human offer to discourses 
around embodiment, somatics, and practice?
    * How do “post-human” technologies offer new opportunities to 
recreate and archive embodied experience?
    * How might discussions of the post-human become useful to 
considerations of embodiment in hybrid performance forms?
    * How do digital representations of the body reconfigure somatic 
experience?
    * How can the fantastical figure of the cyborg illuminate the 
diurnal lived experiences of actual bodies?
    * How do popular performance forms engage with these questions 
differently from the avant garde?


The seminar uses a blog (hosted on the ASTR site and open to all ASTR 
members) to structure preconference dialogue. Beginning in late summer 
each member will post at least twice to the blog. While the blog is 
essential to the seminar’s preconference dialogue, the posting schedule 
is flexible and no previous blogging experience is necessary. The first 
post introduces individual topics through a visual image, and the second 
indicates a “research tangent” not covered in the seminar paper but 
relevant to its argument and the goals of the session. At the end of 
preconference dialogue, each member of the seminar will produce a 10-12 
page paper to circulate among the group one month prior to the 
conference (or no later than Monday, October 20, 2014). Working session 
members will be paired, and each will prepare a short abstract of their 
partner’s paper as well as questions that specifically link their 
research with their partner’s and with the session themes. At the ASTR 
conference, the co-convenors will use these questions to develop 
discussion between participants and the audience.

Please submit a 250-word abstract, paper title, and short biography to 
Kirsten Pullen ((kpullen /at/ tamu.edu)) and Jessica Berson ((jberson /at/ gmail.com)) 
via email on or before June 1, 2014. NB: ASTR guidelines ask that 
individuals apply to only one working session.
Dr. Kirsten Pullen
Ray A. Rothrock '77 Research Fellow
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Performance Studies
Director, Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts
Texas A&M University
TAMU4240
College Station, TX  77843-4240
(kpullen /at/ tamu.edu)



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