Saturday 18 October 2014

Call for Papers: Sites of War


Sites of War

An Interdisciplinary Colloquium for Postgraduate Students
21 February 2015
Goldsmiths, University of London

We exist in a state of war.

This call for papers invites postgraduate students from a wide range of disciplines and with interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the relationship between politics, economics, society, culture, art, and sites of war.

We invite an interrogation of a wide spectrum of events and occurrences that fall within the literal and figurative ambit of this theme. Responses to the investigation can refer, but are not limited to: international warfare and revolutions like in Iraq, Syria and Hong Kong; acts of terror, and political strife encompassing diplomatic and foreign affairs engagements; economic confrontations including the fiscal and monetary; social struggles extending to migrants, refugees and displaced peoples; tensions over gender and sexuality; schisms of morality and ethics; religious dissension, and scientific and medical ideological debate; and how these impact social groups and how their responses to these events are culturally enacted; and whether culture itself, can be  said to be in a performative state of warfare.

Sites of War is the ninth annual postgraduate colloquium organised by the Sociology of Theatre and Performance, Research Group (STPRG) at Goldsmiths, University of London, under the direction of Professor Maria Shevtsova. This colloquium follows Theatres of Catastrophe (2014), and seeks to extend the threads of investigation that resulted from the event by excavating and analysing how cultures respond to struggle and contestation.

We warmly welcome submissions from postgraduate research students from UK and international universities for individual papers that do not exceed 15 minutes. We also invite practice-based responses to this topic. Please submit your name, department, university, conference paper title and a 250-word abstract or practice-based statement of intent to stpr.group@gmail.com.

Deadline for the application is 10 December 2014.

This colloquium is supported by The Graduate School, Goldsmiths, University of London, Diawa Foundation, Japan, and Suntory Foundation, Japan.

Please do contact us on stpr.group@gmail.com with any queries you may have. We look forward to hearing from you.

Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, Kyoko Iwaki and Geetha Creffield.
PhD Candidates, Department of Theatre and Performance
Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group

Goldsmiths, University of London