medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

A quick reminder that abstracts for the medieval performance working 
group at ASTR 2017 are due June 1.  We welcome new participants!

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CFP:  “Extra/Ordinary Bodies and Medieval Performance”

American Society For Theatre Research (ASTR) Annual Conference
Atlanta, Georgia

DATES:	November 16-19, 2017  (Abstracts due June 1, 2017)

Medieval performance is at once ordinary and extraordinary, a site of 
both critical discomfort and affective familiarity. This segment of our 
performance past remains “monstrous”, made foreign by history despite 
striking similarities to contemporary ways of being. Historians and 
practitioners confront this problem of “difference” with regard to 
medieval dramatic activity and performance practices, staging patterns 
and material conditions, and audience engagement and players’ 
experience; we simultaneously grapple with our own “difference” from 
these cultural and scholarly artifacts, as well.

This session seeks contributions of short scholarly papers that actively 
engage with questions of “extra/ordinary bodies” in medieval drama and 
performance practices. Although topics that address medieval 
constructions of difference are welcome, we particularly encourage 
submissions that examine the spaces of discomfort produced through 
modern encounters with medieval texts and bodies.

Some possible paper topics:
--how does the embodied identity of the modern scholar, practitioner, or 
audience member produce difference or sameness relative to historical 
study or to current issues and movements?
--how do modern actors or audiences negotiate medieval staging practices 
emerging from non-universal tenets or beliefs? gendered bodies? racial, 
religious, or cultural prejudice?
--what is the work of non-normative physical bodies, genders, or 
sexualities in medieval dramatic activity and its contemporary 
representation? of foreign or heretical bodies? of disruptive or 
subversive bodies?
--what bodies are excluded from medieval or modern stages and audiences, 
and to what effect?
--how does medieval performance or its modern incarnation represent 
bodily aesthetics? age and infirmity? class or status? the monstrous or 
grotesque?


TO PROPOSE A PAPER: Please submit a 500-word abstract that makes 
specific reference to the session’s theme to the conference website 
(http://www.astr.org/?page=17_WSSubmissions), selecting “Extra/Ordinary 
Bodies and Medieval Performance” as your first choice working group. 
Abstracts are due June 1; accepted participants will be notified by June 
30; completed papers will be due by September 8 for circulation and 
discussion.

CONTACT: Feel free to contact the co-organizers, Susannah Crowder 
([log in to unmask]) and Jacqueline Jenkins ([log in to unmask]), 
with questions about the session; for general information about the 2017 
ASTR Conference, please visit http://www.astr.org/page/17_Conference.

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