PERFORMANCE TEXT EVENT

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, JADAVPUR UNIVERSITY

UGC-ASIHSS PROGRAMME

ALL INDIA STUDENTS’ SEMINAR 2010

PERFORMANCE TEXT EVENT

16 & 17 March, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

Literature and performance are inextricably linked. From Plato’s dialogues to Walcott’s Omeros, from Tagore’s dance dramas to Bob Dylan’s lyrics, from Shakespeare’s plays to Agha Shahid Ali’s ghazals, the interplay of the oral/aural, the performative and the written has deeply enriched cultural and philosophical thought. Written forms of poetry, fiction and non-fiction have strong dramatic elements and traces of orality embedded in them. On the other hand, the reception of the written text, be it in Chaucer’s England or contemporary India, has involved not just silent reading but also telling, hearing, seeing, adapting. While we expect ‘theatre’ to be ‘performance,’ that is, the display and movement of human bodies in space, ‘drama’ has been appropriated by ‘literature.’ The re-emergence of spoken/sung poetry alongside established forms of written poetry marks the increasing traffic between the page, the stage and the audio/visual image.

Clearly, the notion of ‘performance’ extends far beyond theatre to a whole range of ‘performance events,’ ancient and modern, such as sports, ritual, political action and resistance, music concerts and so on. Factors such as class, location, ideology and gender shape the narrative forms of these events and the cultural texts they spawn. It is worth examining how textuality and performativity develop and reflect different ways of thinking about identity and place, especially with the emergence of new technologies of communication and recording. This seminar hopes to closely scrutinize the interplay between text, sound, spectacle, image and performance through the analysis of specific texts (printed, spoken, audio-visual) and/or performance events.

ABSTRACTS OF ABOUT 300 WORDS DEALING WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE ISSUES, AND PREFERABLY LINKED TO SPECIFIC TEXTS/EVENTS, ARE INVITED FROM B.A. AND M.A. STUDENTS. THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS IS 14TH FEBRUARY, 2010.
PLEASE EMAIL ABSTRACTS WITH YOUR NAME, INSTITUTION AND CONTACT DETAILS TO nilanjanadeb@yahoo.com. PLEASE TYPE ‘J.U. STUDENT SEMINAR 2010 ABSTRACT’ AS THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL.
NOTE: ACCOMMODATION AND RAIL FARE (SLEEPER CLASS) WILL BE PROVIDED TO A LIMITED NUMBER OF DESERVING OUTSTATION PARTICIPANTS ONLY.