Themed Issue CFP: Consent and Cultural Competence

Deadline for Submissions: March 10, 2023

Despite longstanding requirements for informed consent, human racial and cultural biases still frequently affect the communication of consent in medicinal and educational fields (Feyi 2022; Vyas et al. 2021),.  demonstrating the difficulty of swiftly translating consent-focused thinking or knowledge to a shift in the field’s culture and practice. In the process of this translation, implicit, conscious, and subliminal preconceptions of one another’s identities impact clear and effective communication regarding, as well as the respecting of, boundaries. 

The Journal of Consent-Based Performance calls upon scholars and artists to consider the ways in which our biases and cultural competencies affect the communication of consent within performance practice. We invite artists, educators, and scholars engaged with consent-based performance—in theory or in practice—to interrogate the role and importance of cultural competency in consent-based performance. We invite authors to analyze the roles of consent and cultural competency in existing theatrical texts, performance works, and approaches to crafting performance. We invite interdisciplinary theorizing that can inform intimacy professionals in developing more equitable, ethical, anti-oppressive, and effective consent-based performance philosophies and approaches. Furthermore, we invite reporting on the broad range of practices emerging throughout the world that focus on consent and performance, broadly conceived.

We invite contributions that consider the following:  

•       The ways in which consent is, or is not, represented (historically or now) in written theatrical texts—in scripts; in stage directions; in dramaturgy; in reviews
•       The ways in which cultural competency can (or should) inform the tools, practices, and effectiveness of, consent-based performance practices
•       Theories and philosophies that should guide performance practitioners seeking to both communicate intimacy in performance and establish consent among practitioners in more equitable and inclusive ways 
•       The intersection of identity and intimacy: in what ways can we expand the definitions of intimacy for our field, and how does this intersection complicate our capacity to clearly communicate consent?
•       Approaches to communicating consent and intimacy within performance practices and genres outside of the United States and outside of theatre

 

Olukanni, Feyi. 2022. “Henrietta Lacks Black History Women’s History.” Black Students of California United. February 22, 2022. https://www.blackstudentscu.us/the-unknown-life-of-henrietta-lacks.

Vyas, Darshali A, Leo G Eisenstein, and David S Jones. 2020. “Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms.” The New England Journal of Medicine, 9.