In Cahoots: Disciplinary Crossings and a Future for Performance Studies
Abstract Due: November 10th, 2022
Conference Dates: February 15-17, 2023
Like performance studies, ‘in cahoots’ is a phrase with “murky origins” – etymologies have been traced without a clear beginning, perhaps from cohort or cahute (adjacent to cabin or hut). Meaning partnership, colluding, or working together, often in secret, the term itself is in cahoots: cahoots is rarely if ever used as a stand alone word. Similarly, performance studies is never stand alone, but in constant relations with a constellation of fields, from linguistics and anthropology, to queer and critical race theory. This type of conceptual entanglement drives UCLA’s Center for Performance Studies Graduate Student Conference: “In Cahoots: Disciplinary Crossings and a Future for Performance Studies.” Following our 2021 conference theme of ‘Contact,’ we invite graduate students to reflect on the promises and challenges of being “In Cahoots” with multiple discourses, fields, and methods.
New research trends have seen many scholars bringing together odd bedfellows that raise new challenges: How might a keyword track across fields? Is it possible to reconcile the goals of humanities and science? Where is the departmental “home” for this new brand of research? Performance studies has already positioned itself as a tempestuous and unruly younger sibling amongst longer standing fields. Interdisciplinary by nature, it is an elastic framework that can pierce holes in academic silos. This conference aims to build alliances for interdisciplinary performance scholars working between and across fields. Though our research projects may vary dramatically (and we hope they do) we still grapple with many of the same murky obstacles. This is a unique and intimate conference that will give a platform to these discussions for exciting new scholars working on the bleeding-edge of interdisciplinary research. We will be in cahoots.