"Performing Prison": proposed special session at the 2004 MMLA (4-7
November 2004, St. Louis)
Incarceration itself entails performance (and performativity) on many
levels (as ritual, as paradoxically secret spectacle, as role-playing).
The panel thus seeks to explore what happens when performance from the
outside (in several forms) is layered over the already theatrical nature
of prison life. The panel will ask (and attempt to answer) fascinating
questions linking performance and prison: What happens when prisoners
become performers? Is Hamlet still Hamlet when it is performed in
prison? How does performance in prison challenge identity boundaries?
What happens to the teaching of writing when it is performed in prison?
Is a poetry reading in prison the same performance as one on the
outside? These inquiries may help us understand the multivalent nature
of performance by locating it in an unsettling setting, the contemporary
prison. Abstracts by 15 April, email or postal mail.
Rose Shapiro
Assistant Professor and Director of Rhetoric
Dept. of English and Communication
Fontbonne University
6800 Wydown Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63105
314-889-4555
rshapiro@fontbonne.edu
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