Call for participants for seminar on performance history at CATR May 2011

[Stephen Johnson]

Call for Participants

Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR) conference, Fredericton, NB May 28-31, 2011

Seminar B: A Tyranny of Documents: The Further Adventures of the Performing Arts Historian as Film Noir Detective

Organizer: Stephen Johnson, University of Toronto

Deadline: January 15, 2010

This is a further consideration of a subject first explored in panels at the 2006 and 2007 CATR conferences, and now followed up in a forthcoming volume of Performing Arts Resources (PAR 28), including over forty contributors. Proposals are invited for the examination and discussion of one document (or an equivalent particular problem) that has been particularly troublesome in your own historical research. The emphasis should be on the work of the historian as detective in the archive, and on the difficult balance sought between respect for documentary evidence, the need to generate significance from it, and the natural-but-dangerous tendency to smooth out the rough edges of evidence.

Participants in the seminar will provide a copy of the document and a statement of the problem experienced with it—the way in which it has been troublesome, or the problem of research that it represents. All documents and statements will be posted to a password-protected, secure website in advance of the conference for viewing by participants and registrants. 

Proposals from graduate students and scholars early in their careers are particularly encouraged, though seasoned veterans of the archive wars are more than welcome. The area of research is not restricted—documents inform all history writing, and what happened earlier today is history.

Interested participants are asked to submit a 250-word proposal and short bio to Stephen Johnson at stephen.johnson at utoronto.ca by January 15, 2011. Copy in the body of the email, please.

The organizer welcomes questions from potential participants in advance of submitting a proposal.

Stephen Johnson, Director
Graduate Centre for Study of Drama
University of Toronto
214 College Street, 3rd Floor
Toronto, Ontario CANADA M5T 2Z9
stephen.johnson at utoronto.ca
Centre Website:  www.graddrama.utoronto.ca



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