[H-verkko] CFP: Performing In/Justice

[agricola at utu.fi]

Agricolan artikkelipyyntöihin on lähetetty uusi ilmoitus:
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Performing In/Justice
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CFP: Panel: "Performing In/Justice"
America: Justice, Conflict, War, European Association of American Studies, 60th
Anniversary Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, April 3 – 6, 2014, 

This panel explores cultural performances in the construction and negotiation of
‘justice.’ The notion of justice is legally anchored in existing laws,
resolutions, and acts, on national and international levels. The various
interpretations of ‘justice’ become part of collective imaginations and
identifications not solely because of their textual or material existence but
they are also perpetuated via cultural enactments or performances. Such
enactments include public acts of remembrance, holiday celebrations, or
speeches. While in these cultural performances justice is linked to national or
culture-specific ideologies such as freedom, democracy, equality, national
belonging, and identity, it also serves as a starting point for transnational
coalition-building. Yet, what has been institutionalized and executed as
‘right’ (e.g., the Dred Scott decision, 1857; the Chinese Exclusion Act,
1882; the Iraq War Resolution, or the ‘bailout’/Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act, 2008), is not automatically accepted as ‘just’ but
subject to multifaceted trans/national political, legal, social, and cultural
debates.


This panel examines negotiations of justice via cultural performances– local,
communal, and corporeal practices–that bring people together in a particular
time and place, ranging from peaceful community initiatives, political debates,
protests and boycotts to infringements, violent dissent, all the way to civil
war. It particularly seeks to explore the tension between the cultural
re-enactment of institutionalized and legalized perceptions of in/justice (such
as the Constitution Day, commemorations of 9/11, presidential visits to war
regions) and cultural/civilian efforts that challenge these interpretations
(civil rights marches, anti-war theater, and global protests against economic
injustice). By considering both the reinforcing and dissenting cultural
performances, this workshop particularly seeks to problematize the notion of
agency in socio-political and cultural understanding of in/justice.


This panel invites papers on cultural performances—ranging from political
propaganda events, enactments of memory, and holiday celebrations to theater and
music productions, art installations and festivals—negotiating the meaning and
exertion of in/justice within trans/national frameworks. Potential paper topics
may include: 

•    Performances of trans/national cultural memory: celebrations of
justice (Emancipation Proclamation anniversary, Constitution Day, Independence
Day); commemoration of struggles for justice (abolitionism, suffrage, civil
rights); reflections on institutionalizations of injustice (slavery, Japanese
internment, Chinese exclusion, the Holocaust)
•    Trans/national cultural performances addressing mis-/non-executions of
the law, such as war resolutions, police brutality/Rodney King riots, global
Slut Walks, the prison industrial complex, Guantanamo, torture, solidarity with
Trayvon Martin
•    Trans/national protest against unjust economic legislature: poverty,
gentrification (American Workers' Theater, Occupy Wall Street, protests against
WTO and IMF, Feeding America)
•    Theoretical discussions of cultural performance addressing issues of
justice, such as theater (documentary theater, court plays, protest plays,
anti-war theater) and music (joint concerts, alternative music cultures)
•    Methodological, interdisciplinary approaches to the (trans/national)
relation of justice and performance pertaining to questions of agency, power,
and recognition

Paper proposals and one-paragraph bios should be emailed to both workshop chairs
(Benita Heiskanen: benita.heiskanen at gmail.com and Pia Wiegmink:
wiegmink at uni-mainz.de) by October 1, 2013.

For further information on the EAAS conference visit:
http://www.eaas.eu/conferences/eaas-biennial-conferences/info-2014-the-hague

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Ilmoituksen lähetti: Agricola <agricola at utu.fi>
Ilmoitus vanhentuu: 2.10.2013
Lisätietoja WWW-osoitteesta:
http://www.eaas.eu/conferences/eaas-biennial-conferences/info-2014-the-hague