Cultural Mobility of Performance and Performativity Studies
Poland at Jagellonian University Cracow
28-30 of May 2018.

The international conference “Cultural Mobility of Performance and Performativity Studies” will be held in Poland at Jagellonian University (Cracow) the 28-30 of May 2018.

Download the call for papers (.doc)

In recent years we have witnessed a growing academic trend towards decentralizing the power of American universities as leading centers of performance studies. As new performance studies departments crop upall around the world and a new field of study known as “performativity studies” emerges, we would like to reflect on the processes of cultural mobility of notions, theories and methodologies developed in the study of performativity in diverse cultural contexts. We believe that sharing case studies from different countries would enable us to scrutinize specific translations, applications and hybrid connections that occur in performance and performativity studies in particular cultural contexts.

The main interest of our conference is how concepts and theories of performativity perform in local contexts (Are they applied selectively and to what ends?) and how they change or modify hitherto accepted academic disciplines (theatre studies, sociology, historiography, social sciences etc.). To what extent are the terms coined and used in specific English-speaking cultural contexts (performance, performativity, counterfactuality, situated knowledges, cultural scenarios, remains, re-enactment and more) operative in other contexts and how they hybridize with the terms already rooted in local languages?

Moreover, we’re interested in the process of positioning performance studies in new contexts. In what knowledge configurations (or university departments) do they emerge and what are the consequences of their position?

Finally, do performance studies allow for fundamental changes in academic vocabularies where traditional terms used in local contexts acquire new meanings and new vivid metaphors are imported?

Another question is the undisputed domination of English as the contemporary Latin which has become the main platform for the exchange of thoughts in present-day academia. To internationalize their research, scholars must model and adjust their propositions, findings and case studies in such a way that they are comprehensible to an English-speaking reader who – it should be stressed – may not necessarily be a native speaker of English. In this context, what is the gain-and-loss account of globalizing performance and performativity studies?

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Call for Proposals below : download the call for papers (.doc)

Ewa Bal, Adjunct Professor

Performativity Studies Chair
Faculty of Polish,
Jagellonian University

Golebia street 16
31-007 Cracow
Poland

Email: ewabal1@wp.pl, ewa.bal@uj.edu.pl
Mobile: 0048 791626754

Photo Credit : Alain Patel, Tauberbach, 2014