CFP, Performing Under Pressure: Life, Labor, and Art in the Academy

[Susanne Shawyer]

Please excuse cross-postings.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: McKelvey, Patrick <patrick_mckelvey at brown.edu>
Date: Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 2:24 PM
Subject: CFP, Performing Under Pressure: Life, Labor, and Art in the Academy
To: sshawyer at gmail.com


CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

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“Performing Under Pressure”: Life, Labor, and Art in the Academy

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13-14 APRIL 2012, DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE ARTS AND
PERFORMANCE STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, RI

performingpressure at gmail.com

We work here. But where is “here,” and how do we define the “work”
that we do? Beginning with these questions about the corporate
university, “Performing Under Pressure” intends to make visible the
invisible work of students and scholars (when most academics don’t
call themselves workers). We enjoin academics and artists in the
humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and physical sciences to
think about their field and the work they do, by: paying attention to
what pressures are in play across class, racial, gender, and sexual
lines and how such performances play out in the institutional
framework in which we do our work; critically reflecting on how images
of ourselves as students, academics, and teachers are constructed; and
considering how these identities remain distinct from, and are also
sustained by, the institution that gives rise to them.

Let’s attempt something like a Brechtian exposure of the university’s
workings; in creatively thinking about the things we do, and how they
are done. We’ll explore the economic basis for the university, and how
it is covered over by long-held assumptions about what goes on at an
educational institution; it is not for nothing that Brown University’s
governing body is “The Corporation.” The university reflects the
stratifications of labor--these people pay (students in unfunded MFA
and MA programs, who will leave the academy to join the “real”
economy) and these other people get paid (funded PhD students and
professors who remain in the “unreal” university economy)—even while
it retains the veneer of pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Or,
more troubling: becomes an incubator for “real world” skills for
graduates who will become actors in the finance world. (The Brown
website advertises: “A Brown education is a catalyst for creativity
and entrepreneurship.”)

Possible topics include:

The labor—affective, immaterial, and other—of the scholar in the
neoliberal university
Artists, performers, and culture workers in the university
How “life” is constructed by and within the academy, with reference to
race, gender, dis/ability, etc.
University-based arts funding practices, forms of curation, and
valuation schemes
Government and non-government sources of research funding
Collaborations with business and connections to the knowledge economy
The global university as it participates in forms of off-shoring
Campus sites that reflect on real world institutions: galleries,
laboratories, markets, newspapers, and political forums

This two-day conference will feature keynote speakers including
Nicholas Ridout (Queen Mary, University of London) and Patricia Ybarra
(Brown University), plenary paper sessions, forums with invited
speakers in a “long table” format, and performance events.

Submissions welcome from all humanities and social and hard science
disciplines and approaches. We are asking for you to present your work
to the conference if you can also bring a discussion of the labor that
went into it, and of the negotiations behind it. We are looking not
for studies of the university per se, but papers and proposals that
reflect on our own practice. Please select one of the following
options and email your response along with a short bio to
performingpressure at gmail.com.

1. Papers: Please submit a 300-word abstract for a 20-minute paper
relating to one or more conference themes.

2. Long Table: Please submit a short (200 words or less) description
of your research topic(s) and a list of key terms relevant to your
work.

THE DEADLINE FOR ALL ABSTRACTS AND INQUIRIES IS December 20, 2011.

Please save the dates, plan to join us, and share this announcement
with your colleagues and contacts.

For more information, or to watch the conference take shape in a
shared planning space, direct your web browser to:
http://performingunderpressure.wordpress.com/

-- 
Patrick McKelvey
PhD Student
Department of Theatre and Performance Studies
Brown University
email: patrick_mckelvey at brown.edu
cell: (850) 217-6617
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