Performing Carnival!  

Cologne; Jun 9-13 2025

Call for Papers

Carnival, respectively the carnivalesque, is a phenomenon that can be found in almost every culture around the globe and in almost all periods in history. But it is one of those mercurial phenomena which, rather than being frozen in time like a petrified tradition, is constantly changing, adapting and reinventing itself. Carnival is therefore both deeply rooted in history and always new. It can be highly political and revolutionary at times, self-assuring at others, or merely hedonistic escapism.

IFTR 2025, situated in the city of Cologne, which itself has a longstanding tradition of carnival, offers an opportunity to revisit the concept of carnival in the twenty-first century. In an age characterized by the ascendance of political actors who employ masquerade and exaggeration as a means of exerting influence, and in which the ubiquitous stream of images, stories and sounds creates a multiplicity of competing world views, which frequently obscure real conflicts and power games, reflections on carnival and the carnivalesque have acquired a contemporary urgency.

Possible themes (the list is not meant to be definitive but rather invites extension in all forms):

• Carnival and Cultural Appropriation
• Carnival and Power
• Carnival and Violence
• Carnival and Gender
• Carnival and Transformation
• Carnival and Transgression
• Queering Carnival
• Carnival and Public Spheres of Performance
• Sites of Carnival
• (Un)Masking
• Carnival and Ritual
• Ecologies of Carnival
• Economies of Carnival
• Carnival and Cultural Imaginaries
• Carnival and Material Cultures
• Carnival and (Screen) Media
• Carnival and Global (Dis-) Connections
• Carnival and Religion

Abstracts of between 200 and 250 words are invited for this conference from scholars, teachers, researchers, artists, and students of theatre arts, theatre studies, performance studies, and other related disciplines.

All abstracts should be submitted to Cambridge Core. Please do not send abstracts to the organizers. Please note that you have to be a member of the IFTR to submit an abstract. To join the IFTR or renew your membership, visit the Cambridge Core Membership page.

Deadline for the Submission of Abstracts: 15 January 2025.

NB: Each Working Group issues its own CfP which may or may not address the main conference these. These will be available on the Working Groups’ webpages by 1 November 2024.

For further information: www.IFTR2025.com

Contact: iftr-orga@uni-koeln.de

Conference Dates: 9 – 13 June 2025

Conference Venue: University of Cologne, Germany