CALL FOR PAPERS NOW ACTIVE!

Interfaces: encounters beyond the page / screen / stage
1 Day Postgraduate Research Workshop Event, 29th January 2011
Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Dr Judith Buchanan (University of York)

This innovative multidisciplinary research training event examines questions of mediation and memory in encounters with non-textual archival materials in the arts. By creating dialogues between postgraduates and experienced researchers, and featuring practical sessions with curators and archivists, the research workshop seeks to investigate issues that take the researcher beyond the text in the investigation of objects and artefacts that constitute non-textual interfaces between film, literature and theatre.

Participating speakers and delegates will attend a central workshop event in the University’s Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture and Exeter’s Special Collections, where a hands-on exploration of key filmic and literary non-textual materials will be led by the curators of these archives.

Abstract for 20 minute papers are welcomed on the following core panel themes from postgraduates across the arts disciplines in drama, literature, film and modern languages:

• Performativity: transitory forms created by performance and performativity; improvisation and the play script; the body in play; performance and photographs/stills; the critical interpretation of ephemera; the incorporation of non-print ephemera into academic scholarship; mediations between public interest and critical histories surrounding popular artefacts; the function of stage props

• Beyond ‘Adaptation’: mediations involved in processes of adaptation across disciplines / media; the creation and sustenance of ‘media memories’ in repeated adaptation

• Forms of Engagement: creative forms which overlap across the arts—such as illustrations, sound recordings, and poetic readings; the translation and migration of theatrical, literary and filmic heritages into business practices; non-narrative auto/biographical sites

• Production History: the exploration of how plays have been ‘framed’ in discussion, presentation and analysis across their history; exploring the relationship between "text" and "performance"

• Digital Cultures: the impact of digitization upon the archival ‘text’; the impact of new digital media upon process of memory / memorial; multimedia practices and presentations

• Rethinking archives: how archives destabilize notions of ‘text’ / the search for archival authorial ‘presence’; archival silences; notions of the archive as performance; questions of authority surrounding pre-texts / printed texts; challenges encountered in recreating draft manuscripts; the impact of ‘anecdotal’ archival material

We strongly encourage speakers to present the ‘beyond text’ materials of their research in a multi-media format, bringing evidence of cornerstone non-textual examples—sound clip / manuscript image / artwork etc.

Please submit 300 word abstracts for 20 minute papers to Lisa Stead (lrs204@ex.ac.uk) and Jennifer Barnes (jab228@ex.ac.uk). Suggestions for panels of 3 speakers for any of the given core panel themes are also welcomed. Deadline: October 1st, 2010.