(corpo)realities
|| Advances in scientific research continue to indicate that experience and cognition are bodily mediated and, as such, depend on the sensorimotor capacities of individuals embedded in biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. In light of this newfound awareness of embodied ways of knowing, is a Cartesian split between body knowledge and conceptual processes still relevant today? How can innovations in artistic, scientific, and philosophical perspectives concerning the somatic structure our worldview in an age when technology infiltrates and organizes both the mental and physical tasks of daily life?
In recent years, a number of fields specializing in the study of differentiated bodies have emerged, and through their interventions, have sought to redefine our perception of both individual and collective (corpo)realities. We hope to host a diverse, interdisciplinary community of scholars whose research interrogates the impact of those body-based practices and principles. We seek proposals for papers, presentations, and performances that actively question the chief signifiers of embodiment and presence in art.
Proposals might address the following topics:
- Embodied cognition/the embodied mind
- The co-determination of body and environment
- Critical thinking as embodied performance
- Somatics of language
- Kinesthetic empathy and its effect on affect
- The role of haptic technologies in somatic expression and spectatorial experience
- Weak affect and suspended agency
- Sensuality, movement, and ergonomy
- Corporeality and the actor’s body
- Actor training methods that privilege embodied ways of knowing
- Virtual bodies and technological interfaces
- The aesthetics of differentiated bodies and their cultural representation
- Feminist/queer/crip perspectives on theatre/dance/performance
- The Fat Body and other icons of stigma
- Impairment and disability identity
- The augmented body and its onstage presence
- Access as it pertains to affect, accommodation versus integration
- Illness, disease, impairment, bodily limitation, pain, failure
- Disability as different knowledge, crippled ways of knowing
- Disability activism and (bio)politics
The program is open to submissions from all graduate students and independent scholars. We also welcome alternative, practice-as-research or performance proposals that rigorously address the theme. Facilities are available to stage performances, play readings, or demonstrations.
A $200 prize for the best essay will be awarded at the conference.
The two day-long conference runs March 22-23, and includes tickets to “At First Sight,” featuring new plays by IU’s MFA playwrights as well as a special keynote presentation by community artist, scholar, and dancer Petra Kuppers, Professor of English, Theatre & Dance, and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan and author of ASTR’s 2011 Sally Banes Prize-winning book Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape.
Please submit a 300-word proposal and one paragraph bio to corpo.realities2013@gmail.com by Jan 21, 2013. Presenters will be notified of their acceptance by Jan 25.
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