"Widening the River: Communicating Performance Research Beyond Scholarly Communities"
Friday, June 10 – Saturday, June 11, 2022
University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge (Alberta)
Presented with the support of a SSHRC Connections Grant, the Gatherings Project, and the University of Lethbridge, among others
"Widening the River: Communicating Performance Research Beyond Scholarly Communities" will gather scholars of performance, public historians, and artists from across Canada who share an interest in performance history and a desire to have their academic and artistic work reach communities beyond already established networks of academics and fellow artists. The first goal of the symposium is to help University-based artists and scholars of performance share existing methods for disseminating knowledge beyond academia, while collaborating to develop and refine new models for knowledge mobilization with and to diverse publics outside the scholarly community. Our second goal is to connect researchers and artists from Southern Alberta with a pan-Canadian cohort of peers, and to do it on the ground in Lethbridge. Situated on the banks of the Oldman River Iniskim, as the University of Lethbridge is known in the Blackfoot language, is an ideal place to consider bringing scholarship to broader communities: as a mid-sized University in a relatively small and rural city, local researchers and artists are doing important work with the Blackfoot community, with a large Japanese-Canadian community brought here by the policy of internment, with Black cultural heritage, and with Queer communities on the prairies, just to name a few. Our presenters use a variety of mediums to meet their publics including traditional publication, virtual reality, live theatrical performance, and cinematic production; we aim to foster the sharing of skills and development of capacities among all attendees, who will be empowered to seek out new channels through which to distribute their research.
INVITED PRESENTERS
Jenna Bailey
Liam Monaghan
Josephine Mills
Christine Clark
Danielle Heavy Head
Melissa Shouting
Jay Whitehead
Peter Balkwill
Amethyst First Rider
David Lane
Carly Adams
Darren Aoki
Eury Chang