45th Annual Comparative Drama Conference
Pre-organized Panels – Call for Papers
If you would like to advertise a pre-organized panel on the CDC website, please send the panel title, organizer contact information, deadline, and description to compdrama@rollins.edu immediately.
Calls for Pre-Organized Panel Participants
George Bernard Shaw
Sponsored by the International Shaw Society
These sessions welcome papers on any aspect of Shaw studies, including but not limited to : individual plays/characters, comparative treatment of plays by Shaw, Shaw and his contemporary playwrights, cultural aspects of Shaw’s works, and international Shaw play productions. Email 250-word abstracts to: Ellen Dolgin at: ellen.dolgin@dc.edu by 10 October 2022.
The Plays of David Henry Hwang
Sponsored Panel by the David Henry Hwang Society
Any abstract proposal on David Henry Hwang’s plays are welcome.
Some possible topics include:
The generation of Asian-American playwrights who have followed Hwang and their (dis)connection with his legacy
The presence of autobiography in his plays, particularly Yellow Face and Soft Power
Hwang’s representation of China
Comparing Hwang’s theatrical legacy with his work on Showtime’s The Affair
A discussion of Hwang’s engagement with Trump in Soft Power in comparison to other theatrical depictions of Trump
The David Henry Hwang Society was founded in 2016 at the Comparative Drama Conference with the goal of promoting scholarly examination of Hwang’s theatrical works. Since his first breakout play, FOB, in 1980, David Henry Hwang has proven the most significant and prolific Asian American playwright to date. From the global phenomenon of M. Butterfly and more recent successes with Yellow Face, Chinglish and Soft Power, Hwang has staged stories of the Asian American experience and explored questions of race, culture, and identity.
Papers should be 15 minutes in length, written for oral presentation, and accessible to a multi-disciplinary audience. Scholars and artists in all languages and literatures are invited to email a 250 word abstract in English to William Boles at compdrama@rollins.edu by 10 October 2022. Please include paper title, author’s name, status (faculty, graduate student, other/scholar-at-large), institutional affiliation, and postal address at top left. Abstracts must present a clear argument and have an appropriate scope (usually two or fewer works). Please send your abstract in .docx, .txt, or .rtf format. If possible, please avoid sending a .pdf.
Disability Studies in Dramatic Texts and Performance
Papers are sought for a special panel series on the subject of disability in dramatic texts and performance. We invite research on representation, image, symbolism, societal regulation or construction of disability as it pertains to casting and depictions of those with disabilities in playtexts and dramatic performance.
Papers should be 15 minutes in length, written for oral presentation, and accessible to a multi-disciplinary audience. Scholars and artists in all languages and literatures are invited to email a 250 word abstract in English to Dr. Mary Lutze at Mary.Lutze@uafs.edu by 1 October 2022. With abstract submissions, please include paper title, author’s name, status (faculty, graduate student, other/scholar-at-large), institutional affiliation, and postal address at top left. Abstracts must present a clear argument and have an appropriate scope (usually two or fewer works) as well as an apparent engagement with Disability Studies and drama. Please send your abstract in .docx, .txt, or .rtf format.
Inquiries should be directed to Dr. Mary Lutze at Mary.Lutze@uafs.edu.
GIRLHOOD Plays of the 21st Century
Any abstract proposal on any play, musical, or performance written in or about the 21st Century that centers “girlhood” in any definition.
Topics might include femininity, intersections of race and gender, memory, ageism and the theatre industry, Black girlhood, education and gender, the body on stage, coming of age stories, sexuality and intimacy, physical culture, trauma studies, etc.
Areas for research might include methods of practice, production ethics and histories, patterns in casting, critical theory, history and historigoraphy, literary analysis, queer theory, dramaturgy, or popular cultural studies.
Recent plays to consider:
- The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe
- Dance Nation by Clare Barron
- By Jihae Park
- The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood by Kira Rockwell
- The Mad Ones by Kerrigan and Lowdermilk
- School Girls, or, The African Mean Girls Play by Jocelyn Bioh
- John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower
- Usual Girls by Ming Pfeiffer
- Beastgirl by C. Quintana and Music by Janelle Lawrence
- The list goes on…
Papers should be 15 minutes in length, written for oral presentation, and accessible to a multi-disciplinary audience. 8-10 minute works of performance or other creative mediums are also welcome. Scholars and artists in all languages and literatures are invited to email a 250 word abstract in English to Melissa Sturges at sturgesm@umd.edu by October 7th, 2022.
The American Theatre and Drama Society is seeking papers for two pre-constructed panels to be presented at the 45th Comparative Drama Conference.
Panel 1: Reimagined American Theaters
The pandemic had a crushing effect on American Theater, and plays are only haltingly coming back to the stage. Early in the pandemic, many practitioners hoped that the enforced break would lead to changes in the way we tell stories and in what stories are being told. Movements like “We See You White American Theatre” and Not In Our House have agitated for a change in the way theaters are run, from the back office to the rehearsal room, as well as in the kinds of plays programmed for “post-pandemic” seasons. In the last year, theater has begun to come back. This panel seeks papers that examine the ways in which that hope has been (or has not been) fulfilled.
Panel 2: American Oppressions
The theatre is one venue through which we can come to terms with the systems under which we struggle. Some playwrights dig more deeply or more often into our nation’s structures of oppression; from Redlining to the Prison-industrial complex, from historical plays about slavery to contemporary ones about immigration or racial profiling. Productions can also choose to use plays that might have been written about other issues to thematize these systems, often bringing new life to old works. Papers may address any aspect of particularly American oppressions, as thematized by American plays or productions. Equally welcome would be papers about plays written or produced in other countries but which explore particularly American issues.
Submission Instructions:
Papers should be 15 minutes in length, written for oral presentation, and accessible to a multi-disciplinary audience. Please send a 250-word abstract to Dr. Richard Gilbert at rgilbert1@luc.edu by October 3, 2022. Please include your paper’s title, your name, your status (faculty, graduate student, independent scholar, theater artist, other), your institutional affiliation if any, and your email and postal addresses.
“Dramatic Fictions / Fictional Dramas”
Deadline: October 12, 2022
Graley Herren is organizing a comparative panel that crosses and combines genres: works of fiction that contain plays, playwrights, actors, or dramatic performances; or plays that contain writers, fictional texts, or acts of literary composition. Alternately, presenters may set up intertextual conversations between the work of a playwright and an artist or character from another genre. For instance, Herren will be presenting a paper on Samuel Beckett and Bartleby the Scrivener. He is seeking two other papers to complete the panel. Only in-person presentations will be considered for this panel.
If you are interested in presenting a paper in the “Dramatic Fictions / Fictional Dramas” panel, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words [including name, paper title, institutional affiliation and rank (if applicable)] by October 12, 2022 to Graley Herren at herren@xavier.edu. Three papers of 15-minutes apiece will eventually be included in this pre-organized panel. If a sufficient number of strong proposals are submitted, it may be possible to add a second panel on this topic. Applicants will receive an update on the status of their submissions by mid-October.
All papers presented at CDC 2023 are eligible for publication consideration in the annual book series Text & Presentation after being expanded into full-length research papers. For more information see the conference website: https://blogs.rollins.edu/drama/.