From Yana.Meerzon at uOttawa.ca  Mon Aug  3 09:55:02 2026
From: Yana.Meerzon at uOttawa.ca (Yana Meerzon)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2026 13:55:02 +0000
Subject: [Candrama] Conference CFP: Beyond Gentrification: Performing
 Spatial Transformation
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CFP: International Conference



BEYOND GENTRIFICATION:

PERFORMING SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION



Dates: June 24-25, 2027



Venue: Seminarraum 1+2, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna



Keynote Speaker:

Sharon Zukin, Professor Emerita of Sociology

Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York



Since the late 1990s, scholars working across the different disciplinary contexts of Theatre and Performance Studies, Urban Studies, and Cultural Geography have converged around a key question: how do the arts transform urban spaces in tangible and intangible ways? In Theatre and Performance Studies, this question has led to discussions around the agency of theatre and performance, with scholars outlining both the transformative political potentials of theatre and performance practices, and the material dynamics - like changing cultural policies, decreasing funding opportunities, and political pressures - that limit these potentials. Meanwhile, in Urban Studies, scholars have examined the impact of cultural producers and cultural institutions, and the role played by the symbolic economies that they generate in urban space. Research on art as an agent of urban change has been particularly strong in scholarship on gentrification, where otherwise differing approaches have agreed on the pioneering role of culture.



This conference seeks to build on this budding interdisciplinary conversation to re-examine the relationship of theatre and performance to spatial history, development and transformation. Rather than taking the question of agency or causality as a given, however, we seek to think expansively about the many roles that theatre and performance play in altering, developing, and negotiating both urban and non-urban space. While open to scholars working across Theatre and Performance Studies and Urban Studies, we also intend for our use of the term “performance” to function expansively, and invite proposals that examine a range of cultural forms, including dance, music, festivals, art biennials, and nightlife. In that light, paper proposals could consider:



-       Processes of urban transformation that involve but also look beyond gentrification, including:

o   Deindustrialization and the adaptive use of industrial sites for performance

o   The impact of infrastructural change (such as new spaces of transit) on performance

o   The securitization and surveillance of cultural and performance spaces

o   The impact of climate adaptation on performance spaces and practices



-       Historical periods that precede the classic late-twentieth-century timelines of gentrification research, including:

o   Performance spaces during the heyday of industrial urbanization

o   Interwar and socialist-era urban planning and performance

o   Colonial urban design and performance spaces

o   Performance in the midst of postwar reconstruction



-       Forms of urban transformation that differ from Euro-American models, including:

o   Postcolonial urban transformations

o   State-driven redevelopment in mega-cities

o   Performance in informal urban settlements

o   Performance in the context of reconstruction following periods of conflict or war



-       Examples of spatial transformation that take place outside the city, including:

o   Rural performance in contexts of agricultural change and/or depopulation

o   The experiences of sub-urban, regional, or touring performance networks in an age of expanded urbanization

o   Performances in borderlands, contested zones, or other spaces of discontinuity



Additionally, we are interested in proposals that approach performance and the transformation of space via novel and/or mixed methodologies. These could include what are variously labeled arts-based, participatory, or practice-as-research approaches, forms of visual ethnography, or practices of participatory mapping and cartography.



Submission Guidelines:



Proposals should be submitted to emine.fisek at oeaw.ac.at<mailto:emine.fisek at oeaw.ac.at> by October 15, 2026. Submissions should include (in a single file):



-       The author’s name, affiliation, and contact information;

-       The title of the proposed paper;

-       An abstract of 300 words;

-       A short biography of up to 150 words.



Selected papers will be published in a peer-reviewed collection.



Schedule:



Proposal Deadline: October 15, 2026

Invitations Sent: November 30, 2026

Conference Dates: June 24-25, 2027



Funding:



A limited number of partial bursaries for travel and/or accommodation may be offered, subject to available funding. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please let us know in your proposal.



Organisers:



This conference is organized by the members of “Theatre and Gentrification in the European City” (THEAGENT), a multi-year research project funded by the European Research Council (Grant #101043740). For details, please see:



https://www.oeaw.ac.at/projects/theagent



The “Theatre and Gentrification in the European City” project consortium includes the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama of the University of London, the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and the American University of Paris.



Contact:



Emine Fişek: emine.fisek at oeaw.ac.at<mailto:emine.fisek at oeaw.ac.at>









Emine Fişek, PhD

PI, ERC Consolidator Grant "Theatre and Gentrification in the European City"

Principal Researcher, Institute for Urban and Regional Research (ISR)

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Bäckerstraße 13, 1010 Wien

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/isr/team/ag-culture-and-urban-transformation/emine-fisek

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/projects/theagent




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From t.u.schmidt at uu.nl  Wed Aug  5 03:57:35 2026
From: t.u.schmidt at uu.nl (Schmidt, T.U. (Theron))
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2026 07:57:35 +0000
Subject: [Candrama] Call for Proposals: Caste, Corporeality,
 and Performance - proposal deadline 20 September 2026
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Call for Proposals
GPS: Global Performance Studies<https://gps.psi-web.org>
Special Issue: “Caste, Corporeality, and Performance”
Editors: Anusha Kedhar<https://dance.ucr.edu/faculty/anusha-kedhar/> (University of California Riverside, USA) and Brahma Prakash<https://www.jnu.ac.in/content/bprakash> (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)

View this call online: https://gps.psi-web.org/announcement/view/17

We are pleased to invite submissions for consideration in a special issue of GPS: Global Performance Studies<https://gps.psi-web.org/> on “Caste, Corporeality, and Performance.”

Following the artistic and critical conversations initiated during the Caste and Corporeality Conference<http://casteandcorporeality.wordpress.com/> held at the University of California Riverside from April 12–May 24, 2024, this special issue seeks to bring together the study of caste, which has historically been the remit of the social sciences, with the study of corporeality and performance, which emerges out of the arts and humanities, to think about the ways in which caste is performed, reproduced, and resisted through the body. While caste has been theorized primarily through an economic, social, and political lens, there has been a recent shift towards thinking about caste and the body/embodiment (Saha 2020; Siddharth and Fadescha 2022), caste and touch (Jawaare 2019; Sarukkai 2009), caste and the senses/affect (Kanjilal 2024; Lee 2017 and 2021), caste and social performance (Bhoi and Gorringe 2023; Guru and Sarukkai 2020; Narayan 2021), and caste and dance/theatre (Kamath 2019; Kedhar 2025; Krishnan, Soneji, and Pillai 2024; Mitra 2025; Paik 2022; Pillai 2020; Prakash 2019; Putcha 2023). This special issue on caste, corporeality, and performance builds on this emerging discourse to ask what the analytic of caste can reveal about performance and what the analytic of performance can reveal about the corporeality of caste.

A 3000-year-old system with origins in the Indian subcontinent, caste is an exclusionary social hierarchy system rooted in Hindu scriptural texts. The caste system ranks society into four castes—brahmins, or the priestly caste; kshatriyas, or warriors and soldiers; vaishyas, or merchants and businesspeople; and shudras, or manual laborers—with hundreds of sub-castes within each of these groups. At the very bottom is a fifth group that includes Dalits, previously called “untouchables,” who are relegated to some of the most dehumanizing and dangerous forms of labor, including manual scavenging and corpse-burning. They are considered avarna, or without caste or outcaste. As Indian social reformer Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar rightly stated in 1936, the caste system is not just a division of labor but a division of laborers (2014). This system continues today despite being outlawed by the Indian Constitution.

The connection between caste and the body can be found in the very earliest Hindu scriptures. In the Rig Veda (1500–1200 BCE), where caste (varna) is first mentioned, the creation story states that brahmins were born from the head of the Purusha Sukta (“Cosmic Being”), kshatriyas from the chest, vaishyas from the legs, and shudras from the feet. This creation story not only mapped caste onto the body, but also established a hierarchy between the mind and the body, privileging those who engaged in intellectual and spiritual work (i.e., the work of the mind) over those who provided manual labor in the (battle) field (i.e., the work of the body).

In addition to labor, caste is also performed through social choreographies, including purity/pollution practices such as endogamy (intra-caste marriage), food traditions (vegetarian vs. non-vegetarian), social exclusion (untouchability), religious rituals (thread ceremonies), and a range of other ritualised performances. These performative acts are meant to mark, distinguish, and segregate bodies by caste, functioning as an order and command in a caste society. The body is also where correct caste performance is disciplined. When caste-based boundaries are transgressed, violence is enacted on those bodies through maiming, lynching, assault, rape, and even murder to enforce the caste order. Though caste-privileged communities are not subject to caste violence in the same ways as Dalits or caste-oppressed communities, they are not exempt from the embodied experiences of caste. According to Dalit feminist author and activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan (2023), “caste supremacy lives deep in their [upper caste] bodies,” surfacing, for example, in feelings of disgust at the sight or smell of meat (Kikon 2021; Kanjilal 2024) or in practices of not touching “lower” caste bodies (Jaaware 2019; Sarukkai 2009).

If caste is performed bodily through labor, social choreography, habitus, and affect, then performance can also be a means of annihilating or, at least, healing from the trauma of caste. As Soundararajan notes in The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing and Abolition (2022), “[t]he economic-political project of annihilating caste often doesn’t look at how we have to annihilate it from our bodies and our hearts, our intimate relationships, and our sexual practices” (100). “The annihilation of caste,” she continues, “happens with Dalits owning pleasure in our bodies, experiencing life as sensuous, loving beings” (142). The body, in other words, can be a site of refuge and liberation from caste even as it is marked by caste.

In this special issue, we examine how caste is reproduced through the body, performance, and the logic of repetition as well as how subaltern bodies resist dominant caste narratives through gesture, choreography, and collective action. While we build on decolonial approaches to performance, this special issue also understands the dangerous co-optation of decolonial approaches by the far-right in India and the diaspora. These counter-insurgency tactics undermine the rootedness of caste hierarchy and oppression in Indian society under the contested claims that caste was simply a colonial construct. In light of this abuse and misappropriation of the decolonial, this issue aims to foreground conceptual frameworks from dance/performance studies and radical anti-caste traditions to show how decolonization must also demand the de-brahmanization of cultural and epistemological fields.

We welcome submissions that engage with corporeality and performance through an anti-caste lens, including (but not limited to) the following:


  *   How does the body perform caste?
  *   How is caste reproduced in/through the body and performance?
  *   How does caste operate as an embodied ideology?
  *   What are the choreographic logics of caste?
  *   Where does caste live in the body?
  *   How does caste become part of one’s bodily habitus?
  *   How can performance undo caste or offer alternative re-imaginings?
  *   How might the body be a site of refuge or liberation from caste?
  *   What does looking at caste from a performance/choreographic lens reveal about the essence and experience of caste?
  *   What does looking at performance from a caste lens reveal about performance and power?

GPS: Global Performance Studies is a peer-reviewed, Open Access academic journal. We provide a platform for scholars and artists engaged in a broad range of performance studies, including contemporary performance practices; theory, politics, social and cultural contexts of and as performance; performance and visual arts and media; and practices of resilience and care for everyday life. We emphasize a global perspective on these themes and practices, and aim to support under-represented narratives and epistemologies that trouble and contest the discipline of performance studies.

As an online platform, GPS aims to create and utilize digital methods of publishing as a method for supporting diverse and situated knowledges that intervene within centralized or universalizing academic discourses. We are also interested in modes of scholarship that engage productively with the relationship between form and content, and we support submissions of performance (recordings of performances, dance films, etc.) and other artistic works (creative writing, photography, etc.) accompanied by critical reflections; audio and text-based interviews; as well as academic articles that take a more conventional text form (6,000–9,000 words), written in English and prepared according to GPS author guidelines. If you have questions about submission type, please contact the co-editors of this special issue, Anusha Kedhar (anusha.kedhar at ucr.edu<mailto:anusha.kedhar at ucr.edu>) and Brahma Prakash (prakash.brahma at gmail.com<mailto:prakash.brahma at gmail.com>).

Proposals should be a maximum of 500 words and include the preferred format (video, audio, text, etc.). Submissions must be original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere. GPS follows a double-blind peer review process.

Proposals: 20 September 2026 – send by email to gps-proposals at psi-web.org<mailto:gps-proposals at psi-web.org>
Notice of acceptance: 16 October 2026. Note: Acceptance of proposal does not guarantee publication, as all articles must be peer-reviewed.
First drafts for editorial review: 15 December 2026
Editors’ feedback: 31 January 2027
Second drafts for peer-review: 1 March 2027
Revisions after peer-review (if needed): 15 June 2027
Final drafts after editorial feedback: 15 August 2027
Publication: September 2027 (approximately)

Further details regarding formatting and submission procedures are available at: https://gps.psi-web.org/about/submissions

Bibliography

Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramjo. 2014. Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition. Verso.
Bhoi, Dhaneswar, and Hugo Gorringe. 2023. “Introduction.” In Caste in Everyday Life: Experience and Affect in Everyday Society, edited by Dhaneswar Bhoi and Hugo Gorringe. Palgrave MacMillan.
Guru, Gopal, and Sundar Sarukkai. 2019. Experience, Caste, and The Everyday Social. Oxford University Press.
Jaaware, Aniket. 2018. Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching. Fordham University Press.
Kamath, Harshita Mruthinti. 2019. Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance. University of California Press.
Kanjilal, Sucharita. 2024. “The digital life of caste: Affect, synesthesia and the social body online.” Feminist Media Studies 24 (5): 1112–1127.
Kedhar, Anusha. 2025. “Occupying the Space of the Erotic: Gender, Sexuality and Caste in Bhararatanatyam Padam Performance.” In The Oxford Handbook on Indian Dance, edited by Anurima Banerji and Prarthana Purkayastha. Oxford University Press.
Kikon, Dolly. 2022. “Dirty food: Racism and casteism in India.” In Rethinking Difference in India through Racialization: Caste, Tribe, and Hindu Nationalism in Transnational Perspective, edited By Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza, Mabel Denzin Gergan, Malini Ranganathan, and Pavithra Vasudevan. Routledge.
Krishnan, Hari, Davesh Soneji, and Nrithya Pillai. 2024. “Caste, Class, Aesthetics, and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam Dance.” In Music and Dance as Everyday South Asia, edited by Zoe C. Sherinian, and Sarah L. Morelli. Oxford University Press.
Lee, Joel. 2017. “Odor and order: How caste is inscribed in space and sensoria.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37 (3): 470–490.
Lee, Joel. 2021. “Disgust and untouchability: Towards an affective theory of caste.” South Asian History and Culture 12 (2-3): 310-327.
Mitra, Royona. 2025. Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch. Oxford University Press.
Narayan, Vivek. 2021. “Caste as Performance: Ayyankali and the Caste Scripts of Colonial Kerala.” Theatre Survey 62 (3): 272–294.
Paik, Shailaja. 2022. The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India. Stanford University Press.
Pillai, Nrithya. 2020. “The Politics of Naming the South Indian Dancer.” In Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, vol. 40: Decolonizing Dance Discourses, edited by Anurima Banerji and Royona Mitra. Dance Studies Association
Prakash, Brahma. 2019. Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the “Folk Performance” in India. Oxford University Press.
Putcha, Rumya Sree. 2023. The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India. Duke University Press.
Saha, Subro. 2020. “Caste, Materiality and Embodiment.” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 1 (1): 200-216.
Sarukkai, Sundar. 2009. “Phenomenology of untouchability.” Economic and Political Weekly 44 (37): 39–48
Siddharth, Jyotsna, and Vidisha Fadescha. 2022. “Body as a Caste Field.” The South Asia Trust.
Soneji, Davesh. 2012. Unfinished Gestures: Devadāsīs, Memory, and Modernity in South India. University of Chicago Press.
Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. 2022. The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition. North Atlantic Books.
Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. 2023. “ Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan discusses caste and its implications in her book.” Elle India, Feb 22. https://elle.in/thenmozhi-soundararajan-trauma-of-caste/.


Dr Theron Schmidt (he/him) | Assistant Professor | Utrecht University | Department of Media and Culture Studies | Muntstraat 2-2a, 3512 EV Utrecht | room T1.13 |  t.u.schmidt at uu.nl<mailto:t.u.schmidt at uu.nl> | www.uu.nl/staff/TUSchmidt<https://www.uu.nl/staff/TUSchmidt>

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From sarah.hilliard at uleth.ca  Wed Aug  5 11:39:36 2026
From: sarah.hilliard at uleth.ca (Hilliard, Sarah)
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2026 15:39:36 +0000
Subject: [Candrama] Job Posting - Theatre Technical Staff,
 Faculty of Fine Arts
Message-ID: <YQBPR0101MB6555210B1685FA542A135968EED32@YQBPR0101MB6555.CANPRD01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

Employment Opportunity –

The University of Lethbridge Faculty of Fine Arts is accepting applications for two Theatre Technical Staff positions. Both positions are 0.67 FTE, AUPE 10, with full-time work expected from September through April. Both positions would begin September 1, 2026. One position will be continuing; one position will be an 8-month term concluding approximately April 30, 2027.

Both positions require candidates that are versatile enough to step into other theatre production roles as needed. The successful candidates for both positions will provide curricular support and be able to provide informal feedback to students about production tasks. Both positions require the safe and effective operation of facilities and maintenance of equipment.

One position will support scenic construction, carpentry, and props needs for Drama and Music productions. This position will help maintain facilities and equipment utilized in the building and storage of scenery and props.

The second position will support the costuming and props needs of Drama and Music productions, and maintain facilities and equipment utilized in the construction and storage of costumes and props.

Applicants should indicate for which of these positions they would like to be considered and specify whether they are open to both a term or a continuing appointment. Alternatively, applicants may indicate that they would like to be considered for both positions and types of appointment.

Full details and application instructions can be found at the job posting on the ULethbridge PeopleAdmin website: https://uleth.peopleadmin.ca/postings/9273

Please note – applications due no later than August 16, 2026.


[A logo with text and sun  AI-generated content may be incorrect.]


Sarah Hilliard (she/her/hers)
Administrative Assistant to the Dean
Faculty of Fine Arts Piiksinaasin

Office W620
sarah.hilliard at uleth.ca<mailto:sarah.hilliard at uleth.ca>
403-329-2126
4401 University Drive
Lethbridge AB, Canada 
T1K 3M4
ulethbridge.ca

The University of Lethbridge’s Blackfoot name is Iniskim, meaning Sacred Buffalo Stone. The University is located in traditional Blackfoot Confederacy territory. We honour the Blackfoot people and their traditional ways of knowing in caring for this land, as well as all Indigenous Peoples who have helped shape and continue to strengthen our University community.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE
This e-mail, including any and all attachments, is only for the use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain information that is confidential or privileged.  If you are not the intended recipient, you are advised that any dissemination, copying or other use of this e-mail is prohibited. Please notify the sender of the error in communication by return e-mail and destroy all copies of this e-mail. Thank you.

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