CFP: Performance of the Real Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Symposium

An international symposium hosted by the ‘Performance of the Real Research Theme’ at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

June 8^th – 10^th 2016 

Keynote speaker: Dr Bree Hadley (Queensland University of Technology)

This symposium invites submissions from postgraduate students, early career researchers and other interested academics on the theme ‘Performance of the Real’. The event asks what it is about representations, mediations and performances of the ‘real’ that makes them so compelling in the contemporary moment. This symposium is necessarily interdisciplinary and takes a broad understanding of the ‘real’ in lay terms, but also as a critical theoretical concept. At its core, we consider how ‘realness’ is performed and encountered by subjects through representations and embodiments such as those related (but not limited) to disaster, trauma and Dark Tourism.

We encourage papers relating to:

•                         The politics of performing the real in terms of events such as (but not limited to) disasters, trauma, war, terrorism and ritual

•                         Representations of the real in documentaries, performance or the media (news or social)

•             The ethics of the real in terms of psychoanalysis

•                         Psychoanalysis and the real in contemporary scholarship

•                         The real as a discursive enactment evident in practices such as Dark Tourism

•             The desires, issues, politics and challenges involved in performing the real

•             Embodying ‘realness’ in performative contexts

Questions that accepted papers might address include (though are not limited to):

•                         How does the real operate performatively?

•                         How does one ethically perform the real?

•                         How are social or cultural power relationships negotiated or maintained via performances of the real?

•                         How and why is realness performed?

Paper abstracts (no more than 250 words) and bios (100 words) should be sent to the symposium organising committee. Please email to performance.real@otago.ac.nz by 30^th April 2016.

Registration: postgraduate / casual rate: $30; waged / academic rate: $60 (includes catering)

Website: http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/performanceofthereal/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/performingreal​