In the Introduction to his volume Perform or Else, Jon McKenzie predicts that the 21st century will be remembered as the “age of performance.” Marvin Carlson ably identifies the preoccupations of performance studies scholars, all of which are potential topics for members to address at ACIS South 2015:
“Performance continues to develop as a central metaphor and critical tool for a bewildering variety of studies, covering almost every aspect of human activity. Performance discourse and its close theoretical partner, ‘performativity,’ today dominate critical discourse. Performance implies not just doing or even re-doing, but a self-consciousness about doing and re-doing on the part of both performers and spectators, an implication of great interest to our highly self-conscious society.”
Individual papers or themed panels in the Irish Studies domain are welcome in the areas of performance theory, audiences, performance competence, theatre and drama, performing texts, dramatism, film and other media, performance art, performing culture, ritual, commemoration, performing social roles and identities, performing history, political performances, performing resistance, terrorism as performance, performing globalization, performing technologies and others.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
John P. Harrington is Professor of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University. Harrington was educated at Columbia University, University College, Dublin, and he earned his Ph.D. in literature from Rutgers University. He has written extensively on Irish literature and culture, including The Irish Beckett (1991), The Irish Play on the New York Stage (1997), and The Life of the Neighborhood Playhouse on Grand Street (2007). He edited W. W. Norton’s anthology Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama (1991; new edition 2008) and Irish Theater in America (2009). While continuing to teach and to attend academic conferences, Harrington also lectures frequently on theater and Irish culture in non-academic settings such as the Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center Festival, New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, the Dublin Theatre Festival, the Manhattan Theatre Club, and others. He serves on the Boards of Directors of WMHT Educational Telecommunications, the co-licensee of NRP and PBS in the Albany region, The Arts Center of the Capital Region, and Mint Theater in New York City.
Proposals for papers, including 100-word abstracts (or for panels, including speakers and topics) should be submitted by November 15, 2014, to Dr. John Countryman at Berry College. (jcountryman@berry.edu) As always, papers in other Irish Studies topic areas are welcome.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Ltd. has invited ACIS South to solicit and edit selected contributions to the Southern Regional Conference. Scholars must present a paper at the conference to be considered. The paper should be expanded and rendered suitable for publication.