The Feminist Knowledge Network
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WOMEN STUDIES
Call for paper, special issue: Spectacular women
Editors: Paola Bono and Roberta Gandolfi
A special issue of EJWS (2004/3) will be published about women in the
performing arts. Women’s studies have highlighted how crucial the field of
representation is to the shaping and definitions of gender and sexuality. We
would like to focus on the arenas of theatre and the live performance,
trying to approach these areas with special attention to the perspective of
women practitioners.
Actresses and performers, women playwrights, directors, choreographers, and
women managers are social subjects, in several respects:
- as artists, they create ways of performing, representing and enacting
'femininity' and 'masculinity', they are the agents and authors of cultural
experimentation with the issues of gender;
- as professional women with a long tradition of 'public characters' they
shape their lives on the ridge of the couplet "public/private", and have
often emerged in time as influent role-models for female identity.
We call for a (scholarly) approach to the performing arts, focusing on
women, not so much as the object of the politics of representation, but as
subjects actively involved in the shaping of such practices.
Possible areas of investigation:
Languages and codes of expressions
Which languages, aesthetic codes, forms of expressions have been privileged
by women practioners? Which specific representative, rhetoric and narrative
devices have they adopted and developed?
Narrating the body
Which 'body' do the artists of live performance narrate in the theatre, in
dance, in body art? How do the different and opposite 'mythologies' of the
natural body and the cultural body inform these narratives?
Leadership and power in the performing arts
Given the collective nature of the performing arts, it is important to
investigate the relational outlook and the working methods of women
choreographers, directors and managers. How do they practice authority; what
specific modes and strategies do they adopt or invent for exercising their
artistic leadership?
The female gaze
Can we speak of a gendered audience and of gendered reception? Which are the
strategies of women practitioners for addressing the gaze of their
audiences, and when/why do they develop specific needs or modes of
structuring the female gaze? What kinds of relations do evolve between a
performer (or a group of performers) and its female public?
Off stage
Theatre and the performing arts offer powerful channels of expression and
self-expression, of role-playing and of social playing. In the last century
they have found a specific place (and market) in social life and education
through the widespread practice of workshops and courses. The time has come
to start a history and sociology of these forms of self- and
social/collective expression that takes into account their gendered nature.
Articles should be prepared according to the Manual of Style available on
request. Contributions should be sent before June 30th 2003 to:
European Journal of Women’s Studies
Attn. Akke Visser (Managing Editor)
Utrecht University
Heidelberglaan 2
3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
tel: +31 30 253 1857
fax: +31 30 253 1277
e-mail: EJWS@fss.uu.nl
For more information please contact Paola Bono: bono@uniroma3.it
Submit calls for papers: FKNWeb@mun.ca
email: FKNWeb@mun.ca
Page Last Updated: 12/18/2002