Saturday, March 17, 2001
Period: 1550-1750
Scope: Europe, Asia, and the Americas
Deadline: July 1, 2001 for abstracts
Please send:
Abstracts: 150-200 words in length
Curriculum vitae: 1-2 pages
Finished articles: 4,000-6,000 words in length, including notes
As we envision it, this book would be a collection of essays which draw upon innovative work in gender and history across traditional disciplinary lines. By focusing on the issue of performance as a relatively new profession for women during this period but opening the geographical borders beyond Western Europe, our intention is to bring together work in gender studies, performance studies, and cultural production in a comparative way. Since "performance" is a broad (as well as deep) subject, the collection would call upon a variety of historiographical approaches that may suggest new ways to consider how women entry into the stage of public performance offered opportunities for creative self-expression through voice and action: the simultaneous eroticization and authentication of the female body.
The female performer has long been considered dangerous, transgressive, erotic, and powerless: by using "professionalism" as our site of reference (some signifiers being salaries and other financial rewards, artistic control, individual self-determination, ownership of craft and talent, fans and patrons) we hope to place these objectifying views of her in comparison with subjectifying views: in other words, to consider the possibility of the female performer as an independent author-producer operating within patriarchal structures.
Obviously, the analysis of issues of the body and its representation and ownership becomes necessary to a comparative collection such as this. Topics might include:
- the introduction of professional female performers in various countries
- female performers and male patrons
- the female performer as commodity and/or producer
- visual representations of the female body as actress, dancer, singer
- the performer and the prostitute
- ownership of the body: audience reception
- controversial and notorious performers
- performance in the New World: touring the colonies
- costume and undress: breeches roles, half-travesty, and breasts
- signs of amateur vs. professional status for female performers
- legal sanctions and boundaries for the female performer.
By opening the borders of our study to Asia, we can consider performers such as Okuni, the priestess who founded kabuki in 1603, alongside the "roaring girls" of Elizabethan England, the professional singers of Louis XIV court, and the innamorate of commedia dell=B9arte.
We believe that THE PROFESSIONAL BODY would offer an opportunity for comparison of national and cultural attitudes toward female performers, focused within the issue of professionalism, which is currently absent from studies of the Early Modern world or, for that matter, from historical gender studies in general.
Send two copies of your abstract with a two-page c.v. before July 1, 2001 to:
Dr. Gretchen E. Smith
Division of Theatre
Meadows School of the Arts
P.O. Box 750356
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275-0256
or Dr. Rebecca Free-Turner
Department of Theatre
Goucher College
1021 Dulaney Valley Rd.
Baltimore, MD 21204
Contact for questions or email abstract and 2-page c.v. to:
gesmith@mail.smu.edu