Please join the Theater and Performance Studies Workshop for:
İlyas Deniz Çınar and Şeyda Nur Yıldırım
Graduate Students in Communication Studies, Kadir Has University Istanbul
Who will Present:
Dialectics of Revision in Performance Historiography and Dramatic Adaptation
Respondent: Asya Sagnak, MA Student in TAPS, University of Chicago
Wednesday, January 13,
12:00 – 1:30 PM
Deniz and Şeyda will present their papers live over zoom. Please register HERE to receive a link for the workshop.
We are committed to making our workshop fully accessible to persons with disabilities. Please direct any questions or concerns to the workshop coordinators, Arianna Gass (ariannagass@uchicago.edu) and Catrin Dowd (catrindowd@uchicago.edu).
Abstract: Can adaptation operate as a mode of revisionist and reparative historiography against institutionalized historical narratives? What is the relationship between the performative praxes of adaptation studies and historiography? In this panel discussion, we will explore the theoretical intersections of these questions that pertain to the relationship in between historiography, adaptation studies, and the implicit performativity of their methodologies. Procedures of selection and exclusion—similar to historiography—are at work during the formation of an adaptation. The ethical commitment behind adaptation studies coincides with that of historiography, rendering multiple conflicts about representation, reenactment, and reinterpretation of the source text and its historical context. Regarding this dynamic as a performative event, we will explore the limits of revisionist methodology that enables artists and scholars to relocate their source texts from the minoritarian heritage into the historically repressive atmosphere of the nation-state. While each adaptation can be considered as an intertext with endless creative possibilities, we also question whether adaptation studies should establish a ground theory that, in turn, narrow this historiographic diversity. This session will feature work-in-progress talks on the performative politics of the contemporary adaptations of Armenian and Jewish dramatic texts in Turkey, followed by a Q&A.