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-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Help the Religion and Theatre Focus Group plan for ATHE’s 2010 conference in Los Angeles Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:20:19 -0400 From: jill stevenson <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: PERFORM - Medieval Performing Arts <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Help the Religion and Theatre Focus Group plan for ATHE’s 2010 conference in Los Angeles! The Association for Theatre in Higher Education's 2010 conference will be held from Tuesday, August 3^rd through Friday, August 6^th at the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel. The conference theme is "Theatre Alive: Theatre, Media, and Survival.” Although sessions do not need to relate specifically to this theme, connections are always great. If you have ideas for session topics related to the intersections between Religion and Theatre, we encourage you to submit them for the 2010 conference. (You’ll find details about online submission below.) We are hoping to have any exciting array of R&T sponsored panels that engage religion, spirituality, belief, theatre and performance from a variety of perspectives. Some ideas that emerged from our membership meeting this past summer (and a few carry-overs from last year) include: · A Labyrinth workshop (perhaps co-sponsored with ATME) · "Spiritual Practice and the Work of the Actor" · "Moving Secular Theatre into Religious Spaces" · "Enlivening the R&T Bibliography" or R&T canon mega-panel · "Cognitive Faith: Challenging Assumptions about Performance and Embodied Belief” · "Popular Theatre as Ethical Media" · “Recording Performance” · “Ethnopoetics” · “Performing Religion Online” · “Urban Native Drama in Los Angeles” · “Apocalyptic Performance and Media” What other ideas are out there? If you are new to R&T and want to see previous year's panels, the last few conference programs are archived at: http://www.athe.org/conference/past/index <https://owa.mmm.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=9080fe8c290f4592bf894cb6e616139e&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.athe.org%2fconference%2fpast%2findex>. Just open these documents and search for "Religion and Theatre." Planning for 2010 is in full swing and session proposals are due by November 1st. See information below about how to propose a conference session. *_Proposing a Session_* Although I certainly hope you will use the listserv to brainstorm topics, *ultimately someone has to take the reigns and officially submit the fully organized session.* This involves crafting a call for papers, sending that out, gathering submissions and choosing those you wish to include on the panel, completing the submission form, and then doing the "stage management" required before/during the conference if that panel is accepted. *The submission form will be up on the ATHE website soon (http://www.athe.org/conference/index)* I am happy to help people craft calls and to suggest listservs where those might be distributed. I'm also happy to help people generate ideas or to link specific individuals of common interest together. Please keep me in the loop. *But please remember that the deadline for submitting full sessions is November 1^st ; if you need help in organizing a session, you need to contact me well before that date so that there’s time to forge connections.* *We encourage you to organize panels that include NEW people to either R&T or ATHE generally. Panels are not just an opportunity to showcase the work of people already active in R&T, but also to bring in fresh ideas and new faces. So I encourage you to distribute your CFPs widely and to think creatively about how to pull in new people for your sessions.** * *_ _* *_Multidisciplinary Panels (MDs)_* You might wish to organize a Multidisciplinary panel (MD) if your topic seems relevant to other focus groups. All MDs must be sponsored by three groups---this can be a combination of ATHE Focus Groups or ATHE Committees. The complete list of Focus Groups and their planners is available at http://www.athe.org/getinvolved/focusgroups/index. The list of ATHE Committees and their conference planners will be available on the 2010 conference website in the next two weeks. Organizing an MD panel may seem daunting, but it really isn't. It is an excellent way to continue conversations begun at previous conferences or to begin new ones. If you wish to organize an MD, then you need to think of what three Focus Groups (or, two Focus Groups and one ATHE Committee) your idea speaks to *and then contact the Conference Planners for ALL of these groups.* You MUST email EACH of the three conference planners before submitting the session electronically by November 1^st . *You do not need to include people from all of those focus groups on your panel; you are simply trying to find other groups whose members would likely be interested in the topic of your MD panel*. Again, please let me help you start a dialogue with other FG conference planners. Feel free to copy me on your initial emails to them and I'll help massage the conversation. *_Online forms and links_* At this point, the submission forms for sessions are not yet available online. When they are—hopefully by soon—I’ll send you another email. *The deadline for submissions is November 1st. *Once you submit your panel online, please email me to let me know you have done so--just in case anything goes awry electronically. If you have _any_ questions or confusion, please feel free to email me at this address or at [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>. All the best. Jill Stevenson Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Marymount Manhattan College -- Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/ Records of Early English Drama/ Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 813-4093/ [log in to unmask] List-owner of REED-L <http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/reed-l.html> http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/ => REED's home page http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/stage.html => our Web guide http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young => my home page