British Theatre and Young People: Theory and Performance in 21st Century.
Abstract / Chapter Due: 1 September 2023.
Call for book chapters
The relationship between theatre and young people has a long and evolving history, which materializes a variety of theories and performances that place children and youth as the main focus of theatre art with diverse responsibilities such as audience, playwright, facilitator, critic, performer, etc. In the 21st century, theatre about, for, by, and with young people is an art form in its own right and plays a significant role in both the creative arts industry and contemporary society. Despite the most recent local and global problems like the cuts of funds, and the close of performance venues during the coronavirus pandemic, it is still one of the most innovative and flourishing fields of contemporary theatrical practice in Britain. Local and mainstream theatre companies are finding new ways to reunite with young people who are still drawn to the immediacy of the dramatic experience despite the many distractions such as social media, etc.
This book aims to gather together new and original works on the issues, theories, practices, and perceptions which characterize British theatre about, for, by, and with young people in the 21st century. The breadth of focus will primarily, but not limited to, the examinations of local, and mainstream theatre productions with different perspectives on diverse contentious issues such as violence, religion, discrimination, migration and citizenship, disability, addiction, sex and sexuality, multiculturalism, race, class, identity, inclusivity, globalization, empowerment, transformation, etc., which are conducted with a variety of purposes by performers in a broad range of settings.
Submission Details:
Proposals should be between 500-700 words and should clearly describe the author’s thesis and provide an overview of the proposed chapter’s structure. Completed chapters are also welcome. All proposals/chapters should be prepared for blind review, removing any reference to the author. As a separate document, authors should provide a short CV containing contact information and relevant publications and presentations.
Please note, submitted proposals/chapters should not have been previously published nor currently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Proposals/Chapters should follow APA 7 style.
Please email questions and submissions to the editor Dr. Uğur ADA, ugur.ada@gop.edu.tr
Submission Deadlines:
- Abstract/Chapter Due: 1 September 2023
- Notification of Acceptance: 10 September 2023
- Receiving Full Drafts of Chapters: 1 November 2023
- Finalized Full Drafts of Chapters: 1 December 2023
About the Editor
Uğur ADA is currently working as Assistant Professor Doctor at Tokat Gaziosmanpasa University in Türkiye. He is currently the head of the department of Foreign Languages Education. His research areas focus on Contemporary British Theatre, Applied Theatre/Drama, In-Yer-Face Theatre, Theatre and Young Audience. Recent publications include Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience (2023, in print, Vernon Press), Eğitimde Tiyatro/Theatre in Education (TiE) (2021, PegemAkademi), Publications in the Field of Theatre: Bibliometric Analysis of International Theatre Studies (2022), “What Will It Be Next?”: The Process of ‘Dramatic Child’ in Edward Bond’s Eleven Vest (2022), The Representation of Time through Female Characters in Edward Bond’s Play, At The Inland Sea (2020).
About the Publisher
The complete manuscript is planned to be published by an international publisher company which will be announced later.
CFP
Call-for-Book-Chapters(Posted 16 April 2023)
Scrutiny2 (Taylor & Francis, Routledge): Ecology, Decoloniality, and African Literature.
Deadline for submission of proposals: September 30, 2023.
Issue edited by: Goutam Karmakar
Issue theme presentation:
The ecologies of African countries have been at the centre of environmental struggles and justice from the days of colonial preoccupation to contemporary times. The exploitation of the African land and environment can be traced back to Western modernity’s epistemological structuring, which conceived nature as passive, inert, and subservient to the human world. Modernity, colonialism, and capitalism functioned as interrelated components, reinforcing the metanarratives of civilization, and, in turn, sanctioning the subjugation of nature and ecology under the myth of developmentalism. The commodifying practices of colonial capitalism have been perpetuated ruthlessly in colonised regions like that of Africa, in which the Western powers have exercised their political and epistemological supremacy by systematically authorising the African land and ecology and repudiating the indigenous communities’ rights, knowledge, and voices on it. The objectifying ethos of colonialism has thus been incremental in perpetrating colonial ecological violence in Africa, relegating the indigenous population as ‘disposable people’ and disrupting their existential interconnection with the African ecology (Iheka 2018).
Ecological violence continued in layered patterns vis-à-vis capitalist expansions and mechanisms in different phases of history in Africa and is rampant even today under the façade of neo-liberalisation. The market demands for minerals, metals, and oils that emerged in the post-World War II era, followed by the de-regulation of environmental and trade laws to foster global integration, accentuated the plundering of ecological resources in the developing regions of the Global South, especially in African countries. Consequent to this, resource extraction, accumulation, and transportation have been continuing in Africa, under the aegis of the affluent Global North’s capitalist and corporate needs (McMichael 2017). Petro-violence, or strife and violence aggravated by exploitative oil industrialization, marks the prevalence of ‘violent capitalocenes’ in Africa (Ferguson 2005). The nationalist governments of Africa have also exhibited a neocolonialist temperament in complying with the Global North’s capitalist and profit-oriented interventions, making Africa a source of raw materials for the developed nations, throwing its citizens into vicious forms of environmental injustices and inequities, and magnifying disproportionate economic equations at the global level (Oulu 2016).
The protracted ecological violence has unleashed in Africa an endless nexus of environmental hazards and toxicities, affecting the disadvantaged strata and people of colour poignantly. Masses in Africa have become victims of ‘slow violence’ (Nixon 2011), experiencing ecological degeneration and being denied the right to articulate or participate in ameliorative discourses to combat the ecological injustices. Writers and environmental thinkers such as Zakes Mda, Sindiwe Magona, Imbolo Mbue, Wangari Maathai, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and others have engaged with these sustained issues of coloniality, capitalism, and environmental injustices that have circumscribed the indigenous African people in racialized politics, internal discord, and exacerbated poverty. They have been in multifarious ways endeavouring to probe the ecological jeopardising in Africa in the context of what Satgar (2018) observes as the structuralised and politicised power of the capital, embodied by colonial epistemic and disseminated by agents of industrialization and progress.
As a countermeasure to the systemic disparaging of African ecology and masses, there is a necessity to debunk and subvert the colonial capitalist notions of accumulation, profit, and productivity. The prevailing parameters of anthropogenic growth must be dismantled, and decolonial thinking that valorises the primacy of nature, indigeneity, and planetary wellbeing, has to be embraced. Decolonial thinking involving ‘epistemic disobedience’ and the transcendence of hegemonic colonial categorizations and assumptions, needs to be championed through recuperating indigenous knowledge systems, values, and interconnected ways of planetary sustainability. This, in turn, can offer comprehensive modes of ecological preservation and equitable survival, and assure the possibilities of harnessing environmental and social justice for the disenfranchised people of Africa.
This special issue aims to address the alarming concerns of environmentalism and its representations in African literature. The focus of this issue will be to highlight the ways in which African writers are reiterating the ramifications of ecological damage through their works and engaging with the politics of ‘decoloniality.’ In so doing, the issue looks forward to mapping how far the literary interventions in Africa are adhering to what Malcolm Ferdinand calls ‘decolonial ecology,” which encompasses an ethical repositioning and envisioning of the ecology outside the premises of colonial modernity and capitalism.
This issue, therefore, seeks essays on literary and theoretical writings on existing and emerging African literature. The topics may include (but will not be limited to):
- Eco-literature and African indigenous epistemology
- Eco-pedagogy and literary representations of Africa
- Colonial ecological violence and novels of Africa
- Epistemic disobedience and African indigenous narratives
- Extractivist fiction and crisis in African literature
- Petro-fiction and capitalism in African narratives
- Planetary Well-being in African literary responses
- Decolonial perspectives and contemporary African textual practices
- Decoloniality and capitalism in African works
- Decolonial praxis and new eco-centric pedagogies in Africa
Timeline:
Abstracts should be around 500 words long (excluding bibliography) and should be sent to both special issue editor, Goutam Karmakar (goutamkrmkr@gmail.com) and Editor, Prof. Deirdre C. Byrne (byrnedc@unisa.ac.za) no later than September 30, 2023. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the special issue editor.
IMPORTANT DATES
- Deadline for abstracts: September 30, 2023
- Notification of acceptance: October 31, 2023
- Submission of full manuscripts: Will be decided later
Full papers should be within 7500 words in length (including abstract and list of works cited) as per the author submission guidelines of Scrutiny2.
Website: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rscr20/current
Contact details: Goutam Karmakar, University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
Email id: goutamkrmkr@gmail.com
CFP
(Posted 11 June 2023)