Call for Proposals - PAR 28
To: Archivists and historians of theatre, drama, performance studies, music, dance, and cinema
Re: Call for Submissions for a Volume of Performing Arts Resources dedicated to Brooks McNamara to be titled "A Tyranny of Documents: The Performance Historian as Film Noir Detective"
For a forthcoming volume of Performing Arts Resources, we are looking for submissions focusing on your experience with a 'tyrannical' document from the archive--a document that would not allow you to draw an otherwise apparent conclusion, that flew in the face of the evidence, or that carried embedded in it some aspect of the event that was incomprehensible, no matter how much additional research was brought to bear on it.
Proposals should examine one document--and one only--that has been particularly troublesome to the researcher. The emphasis should be on the work of the historian or archivist as detective in the archive, and on the difficult balance sought between respect for documentary evidence, the need to generate significance from it, and the natural-but-dangerous tendency to smooth out the rough edges of evidence. Joint submissions by librarians/archivists and researchers discussing their relationship will also be considered.
If the historian is a detective, the model is sometimes less Hercule Poirot than a film noir gumshoe, who can’t quite realize the implications of the mystery, but who can’t stop following the clues.
This volume of Performing Arts Resources will be dedicated to Brooks McNamara, in memoriam--former President of Theatre Library Association, Founding Director of the Shubert Archive, Professor of Performance Studies at NYU, a pioneer in the serious study of popular performance in North America, and a much admired teacher and mentor. Brooks was a gumshoe of the first order.
Those interested in contributing to this volume should send a 200 word proposal to: Stephen Johnson, Director, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto, by email attachment.
Deadline: 15 June 2010 for proposals; if accepted, 30 Sept 2010 for final copy.
Length of final submissions will be 3,000 words (10 pages), allowing for a greater number of briefer entries into this volume. We hope to publish images of documents wherever possible, and will assist in rights and permissions research.
Performing Arts Resources is published by Theatre Library Association.
Last updated: April 19, 2010