Call for papers and projects: Teaching and Learning Through Performance Praxis in Carceral-Impacted Spaces and Classrooms

Submission Deadline: February 29, 2024

This special issue of Liminalities is dedicated to research on the impact of performance praxis with incarcerated, criminalized, and justice-impacted populations in prisons, detention camps and holding facilities, and other carceral systems including, but not limited to, mandated mental health facilities, parole and probation, court diversion programs, juvenile prevention programs, community based alternatives to incarceration, group homes, community service, and restitution sentences. How might performance praxis in educational, therapeutic, and community arts encounters be useful to those impacted by incarceration, and by nurturing a critical approach to rehabilitation that remains cognizant of intersectional identities, resilience, and the need to dismantle oppressive norms of incarceration?

Performance practice and theory have a long history of serving incarcerated populations toward processing trauma, promoting self definition to counter the silencing and erasure of intersectional identities, reducing stigma, and facilitating transition. Contributors are encouraged to present evidence about the role performance plays, particularly in transforming lives and environments, improving health and quality of life, and aiding in the development of deeper, more connected communication inside and outside the carceral setting. Given that Black and Indigenous leaders have long called for the need to defund the police and abolish prisons, what role, if any, does performance have to play in this critical social justice issue?

We seek original research across critical theoretical orientations and methodologies in a multitude of formats including, but not limited to: conceptual articles, annotated interviews, clinical/institutional commentaries and critiques, documented performances and script treatments, and other critical/creative works in multiple media by and about incarcerated participants on how practitioners and participants in carceral settings have addressed the following: Addressing toxic masculinity and/or racial animosity; Building practical and relational skills for returning to the outside world; Facing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic; The impact of incarceration on family members; Helping those forcibly involved with carceral systems to resist and survive within them; The rise of the abolition and transformative justice movements to end systemic racism that gave rise to mass incarceration of Black and other racial and ethnic groups; Consciousness raising and resisting systems of oppression resulting in incarceration, including but not limited to colonization, racism, sexism, heterosexism, cisgenderism, sanism, ableism, anti-Muslim hate, anti-immigrant and refugee hate, capitalism, etc.; Considering the relationship of performance praxis to transformative and/or restorative justice; Juvenile justice systems and the impact of incarceration on children and youth; Reviews of current performances within and/or connected to carceral settings; Scholarship informed by and for current literature on incarceration that investigates and explores forms of rehabilitation, healing, empowerment, and/or resistance inside carceral settings, builds consciousness of oppressive gender and racial norms, and offers critical perspective on internalized oppression and the mass incarceration system.

To submit your work for consideration, please review Liminalities' "instructions for authors" and access the Submission Form on the journal information page. Feel free to contact greg.langner@avc.edu with any questions about the submission process.

Respectfully,

Kamran Afary, PhD/RDT: kafary@calstatela.edu
Greg Langner, PhD: greg.langner@avc.edu
Allen Burnett, MA: burnett.ad.73@gmail.com