10th SAAS CONFERENCE

“The Backyard of the U.S. Mansion: Critical readings of poverty and wealth in the United States”

Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).  April 14-16, 2011

 

13) Staging the Body as a Space of Wealth and Poverty in American Contemporary Theater

Panel Chair: Eulalia Piñero Gil
Institution: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
E-mail: eulalia.pinero@uam.es

 

The human body is today a prevailing symbol of social success or failure. The body is a space that personifies more than ever the materialistic values of the post-industrial American society. In other words, the body is the visible icon of wealth and poverty, of excess and scarcity, of an urge for greater and greater materialistic prosperity. Human bodies are regulated and modelled as objects to mirror economic position: sexuality, childbirth, fasting, desires, ageing, and shaping. In this way, bodies become the individuals’ representation of their social status. As Susie Orbach observes: “We are judged physically and our social and economic position has depended on how our bodies are seen and where we are placed socially and economically” (2009, 134). Therefore, bodies embody the tensions of wealth and poverty as they become spectacles that reflect these opposing material experiences.
Contemporary American theater represents an essential space for exploring cultural constructs of the body as a site of wealth and poverty.
This panel welcomes papers which address the following issues in contemporary American theater:

- What is the relationship between body and economic position?

- If the body is a social construct, how does it become the icon of social class?

- How do the bodies on stage represent the society of wealth and poverty?

- How does the human body encompass the pursuit of the post-industrial American Dream?

- There is a permanent desire and longing for a material body, for an unstable body which becomes
  an object, how does the American stage embody these needs?

 

10th INTERNATIONAL SAAS CONFERENCE
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, 14-16 April 2011

THE BACKYARD OF THE U.S.A. MANSION: Critical Readings of Poverty and Wealth in the United States

Name:

Academic Affiliation:

E-mail:

Title of Proposal:

Panel:

Special requirements, if any:

Abstract (400-600 words):

Please, complete this form and send it, in electronic format (via e-mail), to the Chair of your selected panel. Deadline for sending proposals is October 29, 2010.