Dance & Culture
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Papers, Lec/Dems, Panels, Roundtables, Film Screenings, Other Formats
“Dance and Culture” Area of the annual joint conference of the
Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
New Orleans Marriott
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 8-11 (Wed-Sat), 2009
Earlybird deadline: For strongest consideration and earlier notification of acceptance, submit proposals by October 15, 2008, by email to:
Libby Smigel PhD and Deidre Cavazzi MFA at: DanceAndCulture@gmail.com
[for peace of mind, send cc email to: Smigel@gwu.edu] .
Final deadline for proposals is November 30, 2008
Annual event: Site-specific movement installations will be organized around public locations in the conference hotel.
The “Dance and Culture” area of the national PCA/ACA solicits proposals on all areas of dance and culture in North & South America and/or on popular culture worldwide. All methods of inquiry are welcome. However, given the interdisciplinary / multidisciplinary membership of the associations, participants are encouraged to consider interdisciplinary connections of their research and the diverse interests of their potential audience.
The national PCA/ACA sponsors an annual convention at which papers, presentations, and activities in all areas of American culture and of world popular culture are explored. The four-day conference includes formal scholarly panels, roundtable discussions on important topics, film showings, keynote addresses and receptions, and an exhibition hall of publishers and acquisition editors. Last year the conference drew more than 2,000 participants and registrants, and it featured more than 500 interdisciplinary panels.
In the past five years, the “Dance and Culture” area has directly sponsored or co-sponsored 10 to 15 panels over three days of the four-day conference. Last year, we announced that a scholarly publisher was interested in publishing a juried proceedings selected from conference presentations. [For further information on the proceedings, contact Camille LeFevre, co-editor, at LeFev025@umn.edu .]
Topic areas that have been represented in the past include: the role of dance in film, dance and popular music, American pop dance abroad (including eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa), Latin American dances in U.S. and European nightclubs, dance prohibitions, the process of learning traditional dances, liturgical Christian dance, dance and advertising, dance and semiotics, dance and gender, American modern dance, dance in American musicals, dance and drag, African American dance traditions and innovations, the role of dance in African society, dance and carnival forms, dance as identity, codification vs. improvisation in dance cultures, dance in the Cajun culture, among many others.
To submit a proposal, include the following information:
Title(s) [for group: panel title if more than one presentation or paper is included in proposal, as well as each individual title]
Name(s) of participant(s) as they want them displayed in the conference program book
Short bio/background of each participant (not more than about 50 words)
Full contact information for each participant (mailing address and email – email is essential, as most conference information is communicated by email and online)
Abstract of paper or panel or session (not more than about 75-150 words)
Format (e.g., individual paper of about 20 minutes, panel of 3 or 4 papers, roundtable discussion, lecture/demonstration, etc.):
AV Needs: IMPORTANT! The conference organizers provide ONLY a DVD Player and TV display/monitor in each of the presentation rooms. Talk to your campus IT staff for further clarification of how to connect a laptop to this equipment if you intend to bring yours. International visitors: If you burn a DVD, you should ensure that Region 1 coding or Region 0 is chosen.
Special space needs, if any.
Would you be interested in appearing on a co-sponsored panel with another interest area?
Send your proposal by email (Word or WordPerfect for PC documents or paste it into the email): DanceAndCulture@gmail.com with a cc to Smigel@gwu.edu
Presenters may deliver only one formal paper, but they may also participate as a panel chair, discussant, or respondent. Presenters must be members of either the Popular Culture Association (PCA) or the American Culture Association (ACA) in the year that they participate.
Panelists who have submitted proposals by the early deadline will be notified of acceptance by November 1, 2008. To appear in the printed conference program book, the associations require that you pre-register for the conference.
Full conference information, including registration, local arrangements, tentative conference program (when acceptances are sent), and information on the associations, can be found at http://www.pcaaca.org.
Awards for Graduate Students and International Participants: The two associations sponsor a small number of competitive awards for graduate students and international presenters from any discipline who are presenting at the annual convention. More information on awards will be posted Fall 2008 on the PCA/ACA website.