CFP: NCSA Conference on Theatricality & Performativity in the Long 19thC

Call for Papers: Theatricality and the Performative in the Long Nineteenth Century

Submission deadline: September 15, 2009

31st Annual Conference of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association

The University of Tampa, March 11-13, 2010, Tampa, Florida

Keynote speaker: Michael Fried (Johns Hopkins University)

Plenary Event: Exhibition of Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, with a roundtable discussion featuring Margaret D. Stetz (University of Delaware), curator and author of Facing the Late Victorians; Dennis Denisoff (Ryerson University), and Maria Gindhart (Georgia State University)

Dramatic expression and self-conscious performances marked almost every aspect of nineteenth century life and artistic culture, as theatrical turns and performative mindsets introduced in the 17^th-18^th centuries expanded in the 1780s through the beginning of World War One. We invite paper and panel proposals that explore these themes and subjects in the long Nineteenth Century (1780-1914). Papers might address the theatrical shows—whether serious drama, circus displays, vaudeville, operas, or Shakespearean revivals—that appeared in cities and towns on both sides of the Atlantic (as well as in more distant lands). Or they might investigate how politics, social events, military engagements, domestic affairs, public trials, crime reports, religious rituals, architectural spaces, sculptural moments, exhibition halls, artistic and musical compositions, and the early moving pictures of the cinema, assumed a theatrical sensibility. Welcome also are proposals for papers and panels that bring scholarly and theoretical interests in performativity to bear on concepts of identity, individuality, and audience in the given era.

Please submit abstracts of approximately 500 words along with a brief (one page) c.v. to the Program Co-Chairs, Janice Simon (U of Georgia) and Regina Hewitt (U of South Florida) at the conference address ncsa2010@earthlink.net by Sept. 15, 2009. Speakers will be notified by or before Dec. 15.

Any graduate student whose proposal is accepted may at that point submit a full-length version of the paper in competition for a travel grant to help cover transportation and lodging expenses.

Conference sessions will be held at the University of Tampa , a campus with both a state-of-the-art conference center and the historic late-19^th century Plant Hall, site of the Plant Museum where _Facing the Late Victorians_ will be exhibited and a reception will be held. Excursions to the Tampa Bay History Center and the historic neighborhood of Ybor City are also planned. Accommodations are available at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tampa, a short walk from campus. For further information, please visit the NCSA website http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/ncsa/ or contact Elizabeth Winston, Local Arrangements Director (U of Tampa), at the conference address ncsa2010@earthlink.net.