Call for Papers:
Crisis, Migration, and Performance Symposium
National University of Ireland, Galway
Moore Institute
March 11-12, 2016
Keynotes:
Emma Cox
Royal Holloway, London
Alison Jeffers
University of Manchester
The escalation of the European Refugee crisis during the summer of 2015 has made representations of forced migration an increasingly topical and urgent cultural, political, and social issue. The daily spectacle of refugees in motion has elicited both widespread positive public reactions and spontaneous acts of hospitality and aggressive hostility in both rhetoric and action in the countries that individuals and groups have transited through. The unprecedented scale of this mass-migration in post-war Europe has led to rapidly shifting political reactions and policy responses between and often within EU member states. Media coverage of the crisis has tended to oscillate between the highly affecting figures of female and child migrants in peril, and recurrent images of refugees in motion whose “anonymous corporeality” in the words of Liisa Malkki, may engender feelings of compassion and anxious concern, empathy and enmity, in viewers and spectators. But do these feelings lead to any kind of political action or resolution? And what agency are those on the move as refugees or migrants given in this spectatorial scenario?
More recently, theatre and performance scholars such as Allison Jeffers, Emma Cox, Helen Gilbert, Jacqueline Lo and Michael Balfour have argued that encounters between migrants, refugees and those seeking asylum with members of host societies are not simply neutral procedures which construct them as the passive recipients of humanitarian aid.[1] On the contrary, they are performative events. These performative events make visible the manner in which migrants and refugees display agency and actively make their claims for entry into host societies, even as these claims are often contested and resisted, whether through the bureaucractic power of the state or through the actions of individuals.
Building on these approaches within our field, this symposium asks how might we think about the implications of the established and ongoing European refugee crisis for theatre and performance studies? Might we shift focus from the study of refugees within this moment but consider wider collectives of citizens and non-citizens? Can we reconfigure this event of crisis as an eruption that exposes longer patterns of crisis? By tracing these patterns of crisis in relationship to migration and performance, can we use the tools of our field to call into question how citizenship comes into being and is performed along routes of global inequality in Europe and beyond from both historical and contemporary perspectives?
Proposals should explore how representations of forced migration influence and shape political opinion and public reaction to refugee arrivals from a contemporary or historical perspective. They might place special emphasis on examining encounters between asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees and members of host societies as performative occasions in which not just individual rights of entry but global inequalities are contested, displayed, and negotiated. The role of spectatorship in framing and influencing refugee reception policies should also be explored. Finally, note that while the current European crisis is the inciting incident, we welcome any international case study or comparative study
Proposal topics might address but are not limited to:
· The representation of migrants, those seeking asylum and refugees in theatre, dance, film, visual art or other artistic mediums
· Applied theatre as a modality of intervention/inclusion
· The language of crisis in relationship to migration and performance
· Crisis as performance event as well as political modality
· Historiographical approaches to crisis, migration and performance
· The law and performance
· Performance and borders in Europe and beyond
· The performative materiality of citizens and non-citizens as actors/performers
· Migration and the environment/landscape as political scenography
Please send abstracts of no more than five hundred words for a twenty-minute presentation by 15 January 2016 to:
Charlotte McIvor or Jason King
[email protected] [email protected]
Participants will be notified by 31 January 2016. We welcome proposals from scholars at any stage including postgraduate students.
[1] Allison Jeffers, Refugees, Theatre, and Crisis: Performing Global Identities (Palgrave, 2011); Emma Cox, Theatre and Migration (Palgrave, 2014); Michael Balfour (ed), Refugee Performance (Intellect, 2013).
Crisis, Migration, and Performance Symposium
National University of Ireland, Galway
Moore Institute
March 11-12, 2016
Keynotes:
Emma Cox
Royal Holloway, London
Alison Jeffers
University of Manchester
The escalation of the European Refugee crisis during the summer of 2015 has made representations of forced migration an increasingly topical and urgent cultural, political, and social issue. The daily spectacle of refugees in motion has elicited both widespread positive public reactions and spontaneous acts of hospitality and aggressive hostility in both rhetoric and action in the countries that individuals and groups have transited through. The unprecedented scale of this mass-migration in post-war Europe has led to rapidly shifting political reactions and policy responses between and often within EU member states. Media coverage of the crisis has tended to oscillate between the highly affecting figures of female and child migrants in peril, and recurrent images of refugees in motion whose “anonymous corporeality” in the words of Liisa Malkki, may engender feelings of compassion and anxious concern, empathy and enmity, in viewers and spectators. But do these feelings lead to any kind of political action or resolution? And what agency are those on the move as refugees or migrants given in this spectatorial scenario?
More recently, theatre and performance scholars such as Allison Jeffers, Emma Cox, Helen Gilbert, Jacqueline Lo and Michael Balfour have argued that encounters between migrants, refugees and those seeking asylum with members of host societies are not simply neutral procedures which construct them as the passive recipients of humanitarian aid.[1] On the contrary, they are performative events. These performative events make visible the manner in which migrants and refugees display agency and actively make their claims for entry into host societies, even as these claims are often contested and resisted, whether through the bureaucractic power of the state or through the actions of individuals.
Building on these approaches within our field, this symposium asks how might we think about the implications of the established and ongoing European refugee crisis for theatre and performance studies? Might we shift focus from the study of refugees within this moment but consider wider collectives of citizens and non-citizens? Can we reconfigure this event of crisis as an eruption that exposes longer patterns of crisis? By tracing these patterns of crisis in relationship to migration and performance, can we use the tools of our field to call into question how citizenship comes into being and is performed along routes of global inequality in Europe and beyond from both historical and contemporary perspectives?
Proposals should explore how representations of forced migration influence and shape political opinion and public reaction to refugee arrivals from a contemporary or historical perspective. They might place special emphasis on examining encounters between asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees and members of host societies as performative occasions in which not just individual rights of entry but global inequalities are contested, displayed, and negotiated. The role of spectatorship in framing and influencing refugee reception policies should also be explored. Finally, note that while the current European crisis is the inciting incident, we welcome any international case study or comparative study
Proposal topics might address but are not limited to:
· The representation of migrants, those seeking asylum and refugees in theatre, dance, film, visual art or other artistic mediums
· Applied theatre as a modality of intervention/inclusion
· The language of crisis in relationship to migration and performance
· Crisis as performance event as well as political modality
· Historiographical approaches to crisis, migration and performance
· The law and performance
· Performance and borders in Europe and beyond
· The performative materiality of citizens and non-citizens as actors/performers
· Migration and the environment/landscape as political scenography
Please send abstracts of no more than five hundred words for a twenty-minute presentation by 15 January 2016 to:
Charlotte McIvor or Jason King
[email protected] [email protected]
Participants will be notified by 31 January 2016. We welcome proposals from scholars at any stage including postgraduate students.
[1] Allison Jeffers, Refugees, Theatre, and Crisis: Performing Global Identities (Palgrave, 2011); Emma Cox, Theatre and Migration (Palgrave, 2014); Michael Balfour (ed), Refugee Performance (Intellect, 2013).