Annual Conference of the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta 22, 23 & 24 March 2023 Valletta Campus, Malta

Following our successful virtual conference in 2022, the School of Performing Arts (SPA), University of Malta, invites proposal submissions to our 9th Annual Conference, which will take place on 22–24 March 2023. Our first in-person and hybrid conference since 2020, this three-day international conference brings together investigations and explorations under the title of 'Body Knowledges: Praxis, Politics, Performance'. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought divergent ideas of the body, bodily praxes and body politics to the very fore of social and political life across the planet. In this light, the 2023 SPA Conference highlights embodied epistemology and praxis in the performing arts (dance, theatre, music) as well as the performance of politics and the political dimensions of performance in the past, present and future. Situated at the nexus of theory and bodily practice, the performing arts offer unique modes and methods for questioning, expanding and problematizing notions of both the body and the constitution and valuation of knowledge. At a time of unprecedented ecological and geo-political crisis, questions of how diverse bodies ‘know’ and how bodily knowledges are transmitted, occluded and/or made meaningful are not only pressing areas of interdisciplinary research but also key considerations for shifting conceptions of our world.

We invite proposals for papers and presentations in any format that address any aspect of the conference theme broadly conceived. *Please indicate whether your proposed presentation will be in-person or remote.* Possible formats of presentation include:

·  Individual paper (15–20 minutes)

·  Practice-based presentation (15–20 minutes)

·  Collaborative paper (up to 30 minutes)

·  Pre-organised panel (3–4 participants, up to 90 minutes total) 

Topics for presentation include, but are not limited to:

·  Historical case studies

·  Contemporary practices

·  Interdisciplinary approaches

·  Practice research

·  Bodies and performance within/without/across institutions

·  Feminist and queer embodiments

·  Critical race and bio-political perspectives on the production or policing of body knowledges

·  Epistemic injustice and access in the performing arts

·  Typologies of ignorance and knowledge

·  Human, non-human and inter-species knowledges

·  Theories and practices of collective knowledge

·  Choreographies and performances of dissent

·  Transmission and translation of performance knowledge

·  Body politics across geo-political power differentials

·  Militaristic mobilisation of bodies

·  Challenges and transformations to body knowledges, the individual and collective ‘body’ and the body politic, through COVID-19 restrictions and any other historical moment

Proposals should contain the following information in a single electronic document (Word file or PDF): First name and Surname; Institutional affiliation (if any); Contact email address; Presentation online or in-person (indicate one of two options); Title of presentation; Brief description of presentation format; Abstract (300 words maximum); Brief biography (125 words maximum).

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to <jeremy.coleman@um.edu.mt> no later than Monday 19th December 2022 (23:59 GMT+1). Notification of acceptance or otherwise will be communicated in January 2023.

Co-conveners:

Dr Mika Lillit Lior (mika.lior@um.edu.mt)

Dr Jeremy Coleman (jeremy.coleman@um.edu.mt)