2005 ASTR Femininst Historiography Working Group CFP

[Penny Farfan]

  What Did She/ /Say?

Recovering Evidence of Women's Theatre Discourse__

Major accounts of theatre history (including histories of theatre theory
and criticism) typically include little commentary by women artists,
theorists, critics, and historians of theatre, yet women across the
centuries have documented in various modes and genres their ideas about
theatre.  Women's commentary is often embedded (and thus camouflaged) in
various modes of non-dramatic writing, including reviews, letters, and
novels, which may help to explain their absence from collections of
dramatic criticism and theory.

A standard anthology of theatrical writing, Bernard Dukore's /Dramatic
Theory and Criticism/, includes no such commentary by women, but it does
include both extended essays and brief excerpts from letters, prefaces,
speeches, and popular journalism by male writers about the nature and
significance of theatre.  We can look to similar sources--letters,
diaries, novels, prologues, plays, poems, literary criticism, reviews,
fashion columns, training programs, club minutes, etc.--for evidence of
how women thought and wrote about theatre.

In 2005, the ASTR Feminist Historiography Working Group will focus on
documenting and analyzing commentary by women about theatre across
historical periods.  Such commentary might consider the nature, history,
effects, and significance of theatre and the processes by which it has
been made.  We invite proposals for brief papers (maximum 5 pages total)
consisting of a primary document (letter, review, diary entry, excerpt
from novel, poem, play, memoir, etc.) and an accompanying analysis of
that document as a contribution to an insufficiently understood history
of women's thinking about theatre.

Specific questions that might be considered in relation to particular
documents include, but are not limited to, the following:

What does the primary document reveal about what its author believed
theatre had been, was, or could be?  How does the document view the
relation of the theatrical present to the past or future?  How does the
thinking evident in the document clarify the author's own theatrical or
dramaturgical practice, both in its own right and in relation to that of
her precursors and/or contemporaries?  How does the document intervene
in conventional theatrical/dramaturgical practices or accounts of
theatre history, and why?  Does the document memorialize a past event or
person, and if so, why is that event or person significant to the author
of the document, given her present moment?  How does the document
conceptualize the relation between art and life, between theatrical/
dramaturgical practice and lived experience?

The following are some of the larger questions that we hope the Working
Group will collectively consider through its collection and analysis of
a range of such documents:

If we begin to recover a body of overlooked and/or undervalued evidence
of women's thoughtful presence at, involvement in, and reflection upon
theatre, how does that body of evidence change historical narratives of
theatre at various historical periods?  Does a history different from
that represented in current popular and academic narratives of the
theatre emerge when these accounts are taken seriously?

Please send proposals of no more than 250 words to both conveners, Penny
Farfan (farfan at ucalgary.ca <mailto:farfan at ucalgary.ca>) and Kate Kelly
(kate-kelly at tamu.edu <mailto:kate-kelly at tamu.edu>) by June 1, 2005.
Complete papers, including original documents, of no more than 5 pages
will be due by September 1 to initiate a pre-conference discussion via
email.  N.B. Our conference time has been scheduled for Saturday Nov.
12, from 7-9 p.m. **

--
Penny Farfan
Associate Professor of Drama and English

University of Calgary
Department of Drama
Craigie Hall D209
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary
Alberta
Canada  T2N 1N4

Phone:  (403) 220-6680
Fax:    (403) 284-0713
E-mail: farfan at ucalgary.ca

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