[URBANTH-L] CFP: SUNTA panel on performance, expressive culture, and urban spaces

[Angela Jancius]

Posted by Kim Holton <kholton at andromeda.rutgers.edu>



Performance and Cities

 

 

We are seeking papers for a panel dedicated to performance, broadly defined, and its expression within the space of the city.  Examining the intersection between expressive culture and urban space, one angle of inquiry might investigate how cities become embodied through various kinds of performances.  In particular, the ways in which "being urban" alternatively serves as cultural capital and evidence of "modernity" in some community contexts, and as pathological, barbaric, and "anti-traditional" in others.  

 

We are also interested in exploring the ways in which performance can be employed as a transformative medium within the urban context--salving social ills, costuming the built environment, or exacerbating conflict among diverse social actors.  

 

This panel examines how urban spaces produce and are produced by performative practices and identities.  The papers in this panel approach the concept of "being urban" from various perspectives, and address how population displacements and transnationalism resignify spatial identities and performative practices.  Collectively, we hope that the work presented by the panelists contribute to our exploration of new configurations of urbanism and performance as they affect community formation in the U.S. and abroad.  

 

Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 and a short cv via email attachment to Ana Ramos-Zayas ( AYRamos at aol.com) or Kimberly DaCosta Holton (kholton at andromeda.rutgers.edu) by February 16.  We plan to select panel participants by February 20 and submit the panel proposal to SUNTA before the March 1 deadline.

 

 

Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Departments of Anthropology and 
Puerto Rican & Hispanic Caribbean Studies
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, New Jersey 
Email: AYRamos at aol.com
http://anthro.rutgers.edu/faculty/ramoszayas.shtml

 

Kimberly DaCosta Holton, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor 

Portuguese and Lusophone World Studies

Rutgers University-Newark

Email: kholton at andromeda.rutgers.edu

http://www.portuguese.rutgers.edu/kim.html