A call for papers has been announced for an essay collection on professional wrestling and performance, edited by Broderick Chow (Brunel University), Eero Laine (The Graduate Center, City University of New York), and Claire Warden (University of Lincoln).
Scholars in many fields (notably, anthropology, sociology, sports studies, and media studies) have taken up professional wrestling as a field of inquiry. However, the form has generally only been acknowledged as performance in a rather broad sense, either reading it through a myriad of forms and genres (from the medieval morality play to an outworking of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty) or simply noting its theatrical qualities in order to distinguish it from competitive sports. This volume aims to critically reassess professional wrestling as a mode of performance in more specific terms by both connecting it to contemporary models of performance analysis and focusing on particular case studies.
Two principles thus shape the volume: 1) performance studies/theatre studies is an ideal theoretical lens through which we can understand professional wrestling, and 2) wrestling is an unique performance form that provides new and innovative insights for the broader field of theatre and performance.
To these ends, the editors seek contributions addressing the following:
· Plays about or involving professional wrestling
· Pro-wrestling and performance/visual art
· Performing gender and sexuality in wrestling
· Queering wrestling narratives
· Wrestling and folk culture/working-class culture
· Wrestling and industrial change
· Professional wrestling as an archive of performed/embodied politics
· Race and wrestling
· The theatricality of scripted athletics, promos, and the commentator/narrator
· Performer/audience interactions
· Performance/liveness/mediation and the wrestling event
· The performing body
· Nationalism and professional wrestling
· Professional wrestling costumes
· Spectacle and professional wrestling
Also, the editors welcome proposals for essays taking up other topics provided there is a clear focus on wrestling and/as performance. In addition to essays on English-speaking incarnations of pro-wrestling, the editors are especially interested in essays that address the myriad global forms of professional wrestling such as lucha libre and puroresu.
To propose an essay for the volume, please submit a 300 word abstract and a brief bio or CV by September 26th, 2014. Accepted submissions will be due mid-2015. Inquiries are welcome.
Contacts:
Broderick Chow: broderick.chow@brunel.ac.uk
Eero Laine: elaine@gc.cuny.edu
Claire Warden: cwarden@lincoln.ac.uk