An Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference
at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
September 25th - 27th, 2009
All the
world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts
- As You Like It, William Shakespeare
Children, athletes, actors and musicians all play. Can academics play too? What
do we play? Instruments, roles, games? Numerous currents of contemporary
thought, from Wittgenstein to Baudrillard and Derrida, highlight play as a site
worthy of inquiry. However, play does not (cannot?) have a precise sense or
definition, and therefore our aim will be to put ideas into play, to play with
them.
Leaving playgrounds for adult arenas, do we lose the art of play in maturity?
The artfulness of play gives the concept an almost indelible connection to
creativity and aestheticism, but questions of play extend to other concerns as
well, from political and social to epistemological and ontological. Does play,
for instance, provide an adequate description of what we do or how we are as
beings, specifically as beings in language? Or as theorists (who use language)?
What are the implications of such a claim?
When does play transition from joyful and innocent to sinister and
manipulative? Does play have rules or does it break them? It has been suggested
that play provides us with a kind of ethical or even ironic disposition,
unsettling the structures within which we live. But we might also consider,
perhaps, whether the very ease with which we find “play as subversion”
appealing does not suggest that it is misleading as an ethics. Is play’s appeal
as an aesthetic concept transferable to its use as a political one? Could the
subversive power of irony be merely the play of cynical power under another
light? Are we, the subjects of governance and of late capitalism, perhaps not
already and precisely in a culture of play?
The Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism invites academics and artists
to participate in the interdisciplinary debates and dialogues of this
conference between Friday, October 2nd and Sunday, October 4th, 2009. We invite
especially proposals which engage our topic in ways pertaining to Politics,
Aesthetics, and Psychoanalysis, although applicants need not be limited by this
suggestion.
We accept proposals for:
• Academic papers [Presentation of 20 minutes]
• Panel topics: If submitting a panel suggestion, please provide 3 sub-topics for a single panel in addition to recommending 3 coinciding abstracts. A short paragraph explaining panel suggestions is encouraged.
• Artworks [visual and performance]: please submit a digital copy of visual art via email/CD, and a description of performance art.
• Film [short and feature length]: please submit a digital copy via email/CD.
Ideas to play with (suggested but not limited to):
Fantasy
Perversion
Games
Representation
Creativity/imagination
Performance and visual art
Re-interpretation
Carnivalesque
Irony/Parody
Sex/Gender
Identity
Drama/Theatre
Child’s play
Puns
Politics of Play
War-games
Play and Power
Videogame Theory and Avatars
Virtual Reality
Pleasure and Delight
Language/Word-play
Playful idioms (playing hardball, out of play, playing fast and lose, playing with fire etc.)
Abstract submissions of 150 – 200 words due May 15th, 2009. Presentations will be approximately 20 minutes in length, and participants will be notified by June 5th, 2009. Please send abstracts, along with your name, e-mail address, institution and phone number to theoryconference@gmail.com
Compact disks for film and visual art proposals may be sent to conference organizers c/o Melanie Caldwell-Clark, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, Somerville House, Rm. 2345A, London, Ontario N6A 3K7