ASTR 2005, seminar CFP: "Text and the City"

[Kim Solga]

The 2005 American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) Annual
Conference will be held November 10-13 in Toronto, Canada. The
conference theme is "Writing and Performance." We invite applicants
to one of the ASTR seminars.

TEXT AND THE CITY: WRITING AND PERFORMING URBAN SPACE
As persistent as literature of and about the city may be (from
Augustine's City of God to Chung and Koolhaas's recent multivolume
Project on the City), performance has been and continues to be a
significant feature of urban life (from professional theatre to
quotidian rites). Urban writing and performance are both informed by
the development of civic identities, and, in turn, both work to
structure cities on local and global scales.

This seminar will explore the relationship among text, performance,
and urban space. Participants will consider the persistence of
intimate connections between writing and the city, as well as the
capacity for performance to respond to and even destabilize the city
while challenging the privileged position of "text" in contemporary
urban thought.

Topics might include:
* Urban books: The literature of the city as urban
micro-architecture; or, as performance.
* Site-specific and community performance: Interventions in the
spaces of a city and the lives of its residents.
* Before and after 9/11: How did the WTC (re)structure Lower
Manhattan? How do the designs for rebuilding and memorializing the
site respond to urban trauma?
* The after-life of "city comedy": From early modern to postmodern.
* Performance on the margins: How can specific performance spaces
give minoritized subjects a place in the broader city?

Please send abstracts of proposals (no more than 250 words, please)
to both Kim Solga (<ksolga at chass.utoronto.ca>) and D.J. Hopkins
(<dhopkins at artsci.wustl.edu>) by June 1, 2005. Note: ASTR asks that
members participate in only one seminar.

D.J. Hopkins, San Diego State University
Kim Solga, University of Western Ontario