Posted By I. Mayorga,
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
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“Supporting Roles” in the Archive: Forgotten Figures, the Historian, and the Personal
Session for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2015 Conference
July 30 – August 2, 2015
Montréal, Québec, Canada
This session invites avowedly personal, political, and theoretical reflections of theater and performance historians on less-frequently studied or intentionally obscured figures in/of the archive. Taking the theme “Je me souviens” in relationship to the processes of doing history, this panel considers the figures on the margins of the archive and historians’ particular relationships to them. Who are the “supporting roles” in our research trajectories, the peripheral figures that do not (yet) command their own narratives? How do their incomplete stories function within or challenge narratives of “larger” historical figures, styles, periods, or discourses?
As a starting point, panelists might consider:
- Who are the historical figures you can’t quite “let go” of? Why?
- What labor and creative practices are revealed by focusing on these figure(s)?
- How do pressures of politics, gender, race, class, geography, artistic medium, archival bias, or academic fashion work to obscure the subject?
- What role does the concept of historical significance play while performing archival work? When writing history based on that work?
- How does the historian balance a need for complex human portraits with the documentary and narrative demands of history?
This panel is envisioned as a series of short (8-minute) presentations/testimonies/position statements about the historical and archival lives of forgotten figures, including the role of the historian as politically and personally engaged story-teller. Scholars, writers, and archivists of all levels, periods, and geographies are invited to join.
Please send inquiries and/or paper proposals of up to 250 words to David Bisaha, dmb94@pitt.edu, by October 20, 2014. Please include name, contact information, academic affiliation, and any A/V needs with the proposal.
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