CFP: Beyond the State: Performances of Trans-Bodies in Central-Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia

[Yana Meerzon]

60th Annual Conference
American Society for Theater Research (ASTR)
Call for Papers for Working Group:
Beyond the State: Performances of Trans-Bodies in Central-Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia

November 3 - 6, 2016
Minneapolis Marriott City Center
30 S 7th St
Minneapolis, MN 55402
In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Katherine Verdery describes how the discovery of mass graves, the reburial of national heroes, and the removal of monuments depicting extraordinary Soviet figures formed a body politics that facilitated the post-1989 process of transition in former Soviet territories and satellite states. According to Verdery, the unique advantage of the body in politics is that it provides “a concreteness that nonetheless transcends time, making past immediately present” (Verdery: 2013). Building on this insight, this working group takes trans- as a point of departure to investigate the body as a performing site that shifts and challenges our understanding of politics in the region prior and post-1989. We invite participants whose work examines bodily practices in excess of state-enforced censorship historically and today, as well as projects that address the proliferation and institutionalization of forms of trans-performance under the demands of global capitalism and human rights.
Accordingly, we are interested in a wide-range of topics including, but not limited to: bodily practices among refugees, migrants, and minorities; medical and scientific uses of bodies; virtual technologies and prosthetic-bodies such as performing objects and puppets in memory politics; performance protocols of being “human” and influence of discourses such as human rights; forms of cultural diplomacy and cross-cultural exchange; and trans-body performance in the region’s historiography.
In early September, conveners will circulate three short readings on trans-bodies to build a foundational vocabulary among group members. Drawing on the vocabularies and trajectories of trans- presented in the readings, group members will write a 5-7 page position paper by mid October that situates their research in the field of trans-body studies. In Minneapolis, participants will be asked to bring an object, document, article or ethnographic anecdote specific to their position paper research. For the first half of our meeting, we will split up into small groups where members will (a) discuss their research object and the question that object situates about trans-bodies (b) respond to the group’s position papers and broader theoretical intersections. In the second half, groups will create a “graphic recording” of their discussion and present it to the other three groups and the audience at large. Lastly, we will reserve time at the end of the session to discuss the prospect of an edited anthology on the subject of trans-bodies and performance in Central-Eastern Europe, Eurasia and Russia.
Working Group Conveners:
Jacob Juntunen, Southern Illinois University
Margarita Kompelmakher, University of Minnesota
Yana Meerzon, University of Ottawa

HOW TO APPLY
Deadline - June 1, 2016
Please send 500-word Abstract and 300-word bio via ASTR website: http://www.astr.org/page/16_WGSubmissions. (Note: the form will allow you to indicate the title of the working groups you wish to submit to, please choose “Beyond the State” from drop down menu)
For any specific questions, please contact the working group conveners at jjuntunen at siu.edu<mailto:jjuntunen at siu.edu>, komp0026 at umn.edu<mailto:komp0026 at umn.edu>, and Yana.Meerzon at uottawa.ca<mailto:Yana.Meerzon at uottawa.ca>.

ABOUT ASTR & 2016 CONFERENCE THEME
The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) is a U.S.-based professional organization that fosters scholarship on worldwide theatre and performance, both historical and contemporary. Members of the American Society for Theatre Research say the Society is a space to share scholarship and a home for networking within the profession. ASTR also sponsors or coordinates several awards, grants, fellowships, and prizes to support and recognize outstanding scholarship in theatre and performance studies. Visit www.astr.org<http://www.astr.org/>

Conference Theme “Trans”
Theatre and Performance have always been concerned with questions of crossing and questions of mobility. Astride of a grave, as the late Herbert Blau reminded us, theatre takes place across the abyss that separates the dead from the living. The OED defines trans- as “across, through, over, to, or on the other side of, beyond, outside of, from one place, person, thing, or state to another.” From Rosi Braidotti’s “tranpositions” to an increased focus on transgender politics and representation—what Time Magazine termed “The Transgender Tipping Point”—the prefix transis ubiquitous today. Susan Stryker suggests that these changes are in part due to contemporary shifting understandings of the question of representation itself. “For the generation that’s grown up amid the turn-of-the-century digital media and telecommunications revolution, transgender often just makes sense intuitively.” (2008:26-8)
Transgender politics offers a number of challenges to the queer studies paradigms that have been so crucial within theatre and performance studies for the past thirty years, yet theatre itself is fundamentally invested in ideas of across-ness and transition. From the Greek origins of Western theatre, in Dionysus and Tiresias, the theatre offers possibilities that might be read provocatively through contemporary explorations of transgenderism. Trans-figuration, trans-gression, translation, trans-formation—these are all terms that have been explored repeatedly within theatre and performance, as well as critically examined in theatre and performance studies. What might our disciplines stand to gain by an explicit focus on this prefix? Theatrical practice is always already transdisciplinary as well, crossing and merging arts, sciences, technology, and music in the questions of presentation and representation.
Our field itself is marked today, over thirty years after the dawn of Performance Studies, as a hybridized discipline. It is arguably no longer possible, or indeed desirable, to demarcate lines between drama, theatre and performance as fields of study. Indeed, if the advent of Performance Studies was at a moment about the shaping of interdisciplines, then are we now in a moment of transdisciplinarity? Is there a difference perhaps worth engaging—between the advent of interand a now of trans-? If figures such as Tiresias were to be read as intersex rather than transgender—the change decided and rendered by disciplinary structures of power, then how might such a differentiation move more broadly across questions of power and representation? For Thornton Wilder, theatre was the eternal present, a focus on re-presentations of pasts, presents, and futures. Theatre’s engagement with history is always already a trans-historical project, crossing between a then and a now, evoking history in the moment. How does the notion of trans- thinking challenge and/or enrich ideas of theatre historiography?
 How might a focus on ideas of trans- stimulate and enrich ongoing debates and discussions of subjectivity? Trans- as a prefix perhaps signifies a blending, while it recognizes the complexities of such interweavings and raises questions about historical desires to unravel or untangle. Such ideas both speak to a centrality of performance in a broader context and open questions within our discipline.





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