Feminist Research Working Group (FRWG)

The Feminist Research Working Group is a diverse collective of feminist scholars working in various strands of drama, theatre, and performance in different parts of the world, exploring and sharing research methodologies, critical paradigms, and performance practices.

 

Email:

For IFTR 2025, please contact Indu Jain (indujain81@gmail.com) or Lisa Fitzpatrick (l.fitzpatrick@ulster.ac.uk). Working Group email is to follow.

 

 

The Feminist Research Working Group is one of the oldest at IFTR and is a large and diverse collective of feminist scholars. We work in various strands of drama, theatre, and performance in different parts of the world. In addition to our annual meetings at IFTR, our group regularly sponsors General Panels, communicates through a group email list throughout the year.

 

Our annual meetings always include meetings with local feminist practitioners, and we regard this as central to our engagement in feminist practice around the globe.

 

The Working Group’s most recent publication is “Performance, Feminism, and Affect in Neoliberal Times”, edited by Elin Diamond, Denise Varney and Candice Amich (London: Palgrave, 2017). We are currently in discussion with Palgrave about curating a Handbook of Feminism, Theatre, and Performance.

 

In 2025, the Working Group will meet at University of Cologne in Germany. The Call for Papers is available below.

 

Our process is to submit the papers four weeks in advance of the conference, and to circulate them to attendees, so that members read and prepare discussion before we meet. People who are not members of the Working Group are welcome to attend our sessions and should ideally contact us in advance for access to the relevant papers.

 

 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: FEMINIST RESEARCH WORKING GROUP

IFTR Cologne 9-13 June 2025

 

Feminists Performing Carnival / Performing Feminist Carnival

 – Ekstasis – Subversion – Metamorphosis –

 

 

Call for Papers

Responding to the theme of this year’s conference, the Feminist Research Working Group calls for papers on the intersections of feminist performance and feminist critical theory with carnival and the carnivalesque.

 

Carnival, respectively the carnivalesque, is a phenomenon that can be found in almost every culture around the globe and in almost all periods in history. But it is one of those mercurial phenomena which, rather than being frozen in time like a petrified tradition, is constantly changing, adapting and reinventing itself. Carnival is therefore both deeply rooted in history and always new. It may be highly political and revolutionary, or self-assuring, or merely hedonistic and escapist. Its rootedness in the body and in the functions of the body has made it an important topic for feminist scholars in different generations: the maternal body, the menopausal body, the aging body, the grotesque body, the desiring body.

 

The Greek word Ekstasis, meaning displacement, wonder and the feeling of being out of place in an “exalted state of feeling” (OED) is the hallmark of carnivalesque festivities in many cultures around the world: Dancing and singing in the streets, indulging in and overindulging in drink and food, celebrating foolishness – these are all key elements of these excessive performances. Subversion draws attention to the act of parody, satire and mockery – the symbolic overturning of the usual order that accompanies these activities. Metamorphosis implies not only the external aspect of costume and masquerade but also the promise/thread of a truly transgressive or transformative experience of becoming someone/something else.

 

The Feminist Research Working Group invites reflections on performances of the carnivalesque in all forms, facets, and aspects, historical and cultural contexts. In examining the social and political dimensions of carnival in the light of feminist theory and practice, various questions arise: Does its promise of overturning the order entail political change? Or is it just a safety valve serving those in power? Order and disorder, power and anarchy seem to be linked in a dialectical way that becomes visible and tangible in the liminal sphere of carnival.

While the cultural, historical, and social specificities of the carnivalesque may vary, they all share a common thread: an explicitly physical experience. It is not an idyllic, peaceful realm. The carnivalesque encompasses both the excess of violence, horror and the uncanny, as well as the elements of merriment and entertainment. It is, in fact, a genuinely liminal sphere, open to all possibilities and perspectives.

 

We invite papers that revisit the concept of carnival in the twenty-first century. In an age characterized by the ascendance of political actors who employ masquerade and exaggeration as a means of exerting influence, and in which the ubiquitous stream of images, stories and sounds creates a multiplicity of competing world views, which frequently obscure real conflicts and power games, reflections on carnival and the carnivalesque have acquired a contemporary urgency.

Possible themes include, for example:

• Carnival, Feminism, and Power
• Carnival, Gender, and Violence
• Feminism and Metamorphosis
• Carnival and Transformation
• Carnival and Transgression
• Queering Carnival
• (Un)Masking
• Feminism, Ecology and Carnival
• Feminist Economies of Carnival
• Carnival and Cultural Imaginaries
• Carnival and Material Cultures
• Carnival and Global (Dis-) Connections
• Feminist Carnival(s)
• Feminist Carnevalesque(s)
• Carnival and the Body
• Feminism, Carnival, and the Grotesque.

 

As always, members are welcome to submit abstracts that reflect their own current research, even where this does not intersect with the focus for the overall conference.

Abstracts of 200-250 words for the Feminist Research Working Group should be submitted through the Cambridge Journals Online pages by 31 January 2025, at this link:https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr/conference.  

Abstracts cannot be submitted to the Working Group conveners.

 

 

For further information see: www.IFTR2025.com

Co-Conveners of the 2025 IFTR Conference:

Prof. Dr. Peter W. Marx

Dr. Mathilde Frank

Anna-Lu Rausch

Contact us on: iftr-orga@uni-koeln.de