IFTR African and Caribbean Theatre and Performance Working Group - CALL FOR PAPERS

Theme: "Memory, Manifestations, and Imagined Futures"

 

The IFTR African and Caribbean Theatre and Performance Working Group will be meeting during the forthcoming IFTR conference in Warwick, July 28-August 1 2014. See the IFTR conference website for full details (http://iftr2014warwick.org/) the theme for the IFTR conference, “Theatre and Stratification”, invites participants to consider the theatre in our world, its place in our lives, its processes, its value and it’s realized as well as unrealized or yet to be realized potential. The theme chosen by the working group, represents a continuation of our focus from our Barcelona meeting of 2013, and in a way echoes that of the conference by inviting participants to position their papers towards addressing the theme of “Memory, Manifestations, and Imagined Futures” in relation to performances from/on/about Africa, the Caribbean and their respective diasporas.

Our theme, “Memory, Manifestations, and Imagined Futures”, is concerned with that which informs theatre and performance in Africa, in the Caribbean and in their respective Diasporas. Being cognizant of the fact that there are others who have gone before, we are eager to explore memory - in both the literal and imagined/metaphorical sense - in the construction of performance and or autonomous theatrical experience in African and Caribbean environments. Equally, the imagining of futures; past, present and yet to come, represents an important area of enquiry for this project. It is anticipated that among the themes/issues that papers will address will be those of – ritual, meta-narrative, ancestral voices, legacy, identity, language, nationalism, post colonialism, indigenous, traditional and other models of theatre and performance. Closely allied to these areas, we imagine, may be discussions surrounding notions of space/place, technique and technology and their role in shaping how we remember, present, and imagine theatre and performance, from the ritual performances of Abydos to the contemporary.   

Papers are welcome from within specific disciplines, e.g. the History, Literature, Cultural Studies, Visual Arts, Dance and Theatre, as well as from across disciplines, and collaborations are especially welcomed. Intending participants are invited to submit their abstracts (maximum 250 words) for the papers they wish to discuss at the 2014 IFTR conference in Warwick. Please note that 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.

Note that the working group works by circulating papers to members in advance of the conference to facilitate in-depth discussion at the meeting. Members whose abstracts are accepted will be required to submit the full text of their paper for circulation to members of the working group by 30 June 2014. This can be a work-in-progress (draft) version of the paper and must not exceed 4000 words.

> The abstract submission deadline is 15 January 2014.

> Abstract submission is via Cambridge Journals Online (http://journals.cambridge.org/iftr).The site will prompt you to join or renew your membership of IFTR . This has to be done by15th January 2014, otherwise your paper cannot be accepted for the conference. For more information on this process, please visit: http://iftr2014warwick.org/?page_id=205 

Please forward this call for papers to colleagues who you think may be interested.

Information about the working group can be found on http://www.firt-iftr.org/working-groups/theatre-and-cultural-studies/african-and-caribbean-theatre-and-performance

 

Convenors for the forthcoming meeting of the working group are;

C. M. Harclyde Walcott (harclyde.walcott@cavehill.uwi.edu) University of the West Indies, Barbados

David Donkor (dadonkor@tamu.edu) Texas A&M University, Texas, U.S.A.