CFP - ‘Madness’ Manifest: Creativity, Art and the Margins of Mental Health - Jan 12, 2008 Brock University

[Luella Massey]

*‘Madness’ Manifest: Creativity, Art and the Margins of Mental Health*

 

On January 14, 2008, the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University 
will host an interdisciplinary, one-day symposium on the topic of mental 
health, ‘madness’ and creativity as part of its mainstage season 
featuring performances of Caryl Churchill’s /The Skriker/ and Peter 
Weiss’ /Marat/Sade/.  The symposium’s aim is to investigate this 
emergent theme of our mainstage productions from a multiplicity of 
vantage points by bringing together scholars and practitioners from a 
variety of disciplines.  Of particular interest is the arguably 
contentious and challenging process of representing ‘madness’ in 
performance and other forms of artistic expression.  Comprised of 
scholarly papers, panel discussions, workshops, and performances, the 
symposium will serve as a critical forum to address issues of mental 
health, an opportunity for outreach, awareness, and an educational 
resource for students involved in our productions and their audiences.  
Ultimately, the symposium will explore the creative and productive 
potentialities to be found in the tensions between ‘insanity’ and 
‘sanity,’ ‘madness’ and ‘normalcy’ in the arts and society.  The 
symposium will feature a performance of /The Chant/ by the Workman Arts 
Project, based out of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 
followed by a discussion with the company. 

 

The symposium committee invites proposals for papers and presentations 
in a variety of formats.  Possible topics might include:

 

·         The relationship between creativity and madness

·         Architecture and design as related to notions of wellness, 
recovery or containment, incarceration

·         Madness and nature

·         The politics of madness

·         Conceptualizations and representations of the artist as 
madman/woman

·         “Madness and Civilization”

·         Institutional and bureaucratic structures that contain and 
control ‘madness’

·         Artistic explorations of madness/mental illness

·         Epistemologies of sanity/insanity

·         Mental health and the limits of medical diagnostics.

·         Representations of madness in performance, literature, popular 
culture

·         Power and pathology

·         Changing historical understandings and perceptions of madness

·         Illness as metaphor

·         Staging/performing mental illness or madness

·         Creative arts therapy for sufferers of mental illness

·         Explorations of the creative potentiality of insanity

·         Psychoanalytic and psychosociological understandings of 
madness and creativity

·         Papers that address any of the above issues in relation to 
/Marat/Sade/ or /The Skriker/ specifically.

 

Proposals are due November 1, 2007 and should include a 250 word 
abstract and short bio.  Proposals for workshops, roundtables, and 
praxis sessions that ‘exercise’ topics of interest to the symposium are 
especially encouraged.  Brock University is located in St. Catharines, 
Ontario, one hour and fifteen minutes from downtown Toronto by car or bus. 

 

Please send proposals to Natalie Alvarez, Symposium Chair, at: 
nalvarez at brocku.ca

 

 

Natalie Alvarez, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Dramatic Arts and Great Books/Liberal Studies
Brock University
(905) 688-5550 ext. 4496
nalvarez at brocku.ca <mailto:nalvarez at brocku.ca>

 


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