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-------- Original Message -------- Subject: CFP: Contaminating Bodies: The Threat of Women on Performative Display (5/31/10; ASTR/TLA/CORD, November 2010) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:14:51 -0400 From: jill stevenson <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: PERFORM - Medieval Performing Arts <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] *Contaminating Bodies: The Threat of Women on Performative Display* Working Session at the ASTR/TLA/CORD 2010 Conference November 18-21, 2010** Cultural perceptions of female bodies have often been grounded in ancient notions of biology—women as leaky, loose, uncontrolled—and influenced by fears about that physiology’s power over others. For example, beliefs about menstrual blood as a mortally treacherous contagion still exist. Moreover, notions of the dangerously excessive female body endure in contemporary pop-culture images that seek to contain female appetites for food, sex, and power. This working session invites scholars who are interested in finding cross-disciplinary/cross-theoretical ways of examining how these recurring ideas/images impacted practices involving the public display of female bodies, control over such display, and, consequently, women’s participation in public performances. Significantly, in many periods and contexts where women did not appear in dramatic events publicly, they did participate in public dancing. We are seeking work across dance and theatre that considers not only the ways in which these genres empower the female body (often as a defiant presence), but also how our perceptions of empowerment through dance and theatre differ. We are especially interested in exploring the idea of contagion and how cultures interpret performative displays as imbuing female bodies with the power to “pollute” spectators. Although we might relegate such ideas to the past, theories of disgust explored by Mary Douglas and William Ian Miller suggest that these fears persist. Theories of contamination may help us better understand not only historical responses to female bodies, but also negative responses to contemporary stagings of women whose bodies resist hegemonic “ideals.” Negative responses to the film /Precious/ and to magazine layouts featuring “plus-size” models offer two recent examples. We invite work from a range of historical periods, geographies, and theoretical frameworks. We will organize participants into smaller working groups that encourage dialogue across disciplinary, theoretical, and historical boundaries. Members of these groups will exchange short papers before the conference. Each participant will prepare brief written feedback for the other members’ papers, which they will exchange and discuss at the conference session. We will follow this small group work with a larger group discussion about conclusions and connections that emerged from this work, and possibilities for further study. *Please submit a 200-word abstract and brief bio to _both_ Jen-Scott Mobley ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Jill Stevenson ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) by Monday, May 31^st *. Feel free to email Jen-Scott or Jill with questions about this session. For general information about the American Society for Theatre Research/Theatre Library Association/Congress on Research in Dance 2010 Conference, please visit http://www.astr.org/Conference/tabid/55/Default.aspx -- Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/ Records of Early English Drama/ 170 St George St Ste. 810/ Toronto Ontario Canada/ M5R 2M8 Telephone: 416-978-6500 (after 04/01/2010) / FAX: 416-978-6504 (as of 16/12/2009) [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