Call for Papers
African and Caribbean Theatre and Performance Working Group
Theme: Theatre and Performance in African/Caribbean Cultures of Democracy
International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) Conference,
Hyderabad, India, 5-10 July 2015
The African and Caribbean Theatre and Performance (ACTP) Working Group will meet during the forthcoming IFTR conference in Hyderabad from 5th to 10th July 2015. The IFTR conference theme, “Theatre and Democracy”, invites participants to explore how theatre engages democracy with attention to various historical and culturally specific practices, institutions, notions, principles, etc. (See the IFTR Hyderabad website at http://www.iftr2015hyd.in for full details).
For the 2015 meeting of the African and Caribbean Theatre and Performance Working Group of IFTR, we call for papers that respond to the wider conference theme with African and Caribbean perspectives. Our theme, “Theatre and Performance in African/Caribbean Cultures of Democracy,” is concerned with that which links ideas and practices of democracy to the cultural domain of human life, i.e., to the matrices of human interaction in which signifying (especially, creative-expressive) practices inform and facilitate how people make, shape and understand the world around them. How, for instance, does theatre and performance (including the power relations and structures within theatre and performance making itself) replicate, reinvent, represent, reinforce, challenge or undermine democratic ideas and practice in African and Caribbean societies? We anticipate that proposed papers will explore theatre and performance in Africa and the Caribbean as key aspects of the cultural domain in which democracy is defined: as important sites where the scope and meanings of inclusion, marginalization, representation, access, political legitimacy, power, authority, control, censorship, freedom, voice, rights, etc. are contested, negotiated or consolidated within/against the frameworks of beliefs, values, traditions, customs, conventions, and/or protocols.
Please note:
Intending participants are invited to submit abstracts (maximum 250 words) for papers they wish to discuss at the 2015 IFTR conference in Hyderabad. Papers are welcome from within and across disciplines, including but not limited to Theatre and Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Anthropology. We welcome co-authored papers and collaborative presentations.
The abstract submission deadline is 31 January 2015. Abstracts can only be submitted through the abstract submission page at Cambridge Journals Online (http://journals.cambridge.org/iftr). You will have to be a current IFTR member or register in order to submit an abstract. The site will prompt you to join or renew your membership of IFTR. This has to be done by 31 January 2015otherwise your paper cannot be accepted for the conference. For more information on this process, please visit: http://www.iftr2015hyd.in
The working group works by circulating papers in advance in order to make the most of the time and opportunity for discussion and engagement with those papers. Therefore, members whose abstracts are accepted will be required to submit their paper for circulation to members of the working group by 8 June 2015. This can be a work-in-progress (draft) version of the paper and must not exceed 4000 words.
Please forward this call for papers to colleagues who you think may be interested. Information about the working group can be found at http://www.firt-iftr.org/working-groups/theatre-and-cultural-studies/african-and-caribbean-theatre-and-performance
Conveners for the forthcoming meeting of the working group are:
· David Donkor (dadonkor@tamu.edu) Texas A&M University, Texas, U.S.A.
· Ekua Ekumah-Asamoah (eekumah@googlemail.com) University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana
Announcement above received via email.
