The IFTR Embodied Research Working Group (ERWG) invites papers and other contributions that explore the rich interweavings of myth and myth-making with embodiment and embodied practice.

International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)

Annual Conference in Accra, Ghana: 24-28 July 2023

 

Conference Theme: The Stories We Tell — Myths, Myth Making and Performance

General CFP: https://iftr.org/conference/call-for-papers

 

Embodied Research Working Group (ERWG) — Call for Proposals

 

The IFTR Embodied Research Working Group invites papers and other contributions that explore the rich interweavings of myth and myth-making with embodiment and embodied practice.

 

What are the myths of our embodied histories, the stories that live in our bodies, the stories we tell about our bodies and those hidden in our bodies and/or forced onto our bodies and those censored? From individual biomythography to collective myths of creation to knowledge as social myth, myth is embodied and bodies are myths. Myths offer opportunities for re-embodiment of selves and others; opportunities to expand our bodies into multiple materialities. Contrarily, myths are also part of colonial projects that produce the embodiment of oppression, fear and sovereignty. Myths as source of imagination and the imaginary of bodies, that invent, reinvent, remember or efface past and embodiment. Myth is also a verb lived in and through the body. Myths can become an action of embodied transformation of emancipation and also oppression; of colonization and of decolonization of bodies.

 

We invite participants to trace their own identities, to uncover their hybridities and intersections, with an awareness of where power has occluded the sources of lineages. How is your embodied knowledge and technique constituted by flows of diaspora and immigration? Which sources of knowledge in your body are not yet named or valued as they should be? Recognising West Africa as an essential source of globally valued embodied knowledge, we ask how the embodiment of conference attendees may be structured and shaped by African, Afrological (George Lewis), Africanist (Brenda Dixon Gottschild), and Black knowledges that are not yet adequately named or recognized? How can we better cite these and other sources of embodied knowledge? How can we transform academic forms through a deeper recognition of these lineages and ongoing fields of artistic and embodied research?

 

As in previous years, we invite proposals for presentation and exchange through a wide range of forms: written, danced, sung, performed, recorded, imagined, embodied. Proposals will be gathered into subgroups, each of which will design a workshop that adapts the conference session format to its own concerns. In solidarity with recent conference calls from Arts Research Africa and the American Studies Association, we seek to reimagine, transform, and decolonize the academic conference. While in Accra, we will also be discussing our ongoing plans for an edited volume on embodied research in theatre, dance and performance.

 

To join the ERWG sessions, you must submit your proposal through the IFTR website by 31 January 2023. Proposals not accepted by ERWG can be redirected to the main conference.

 

Convenors:

Elizabeth de Roza (SG/HK)

Melina Scialom (BR/HK)

Ben Spatz (US/UK)