Entries 1990 – 2003

Short History of the Little "i" in PSi Compiled by Jessica Chalmers September 11, 2003

1990 "Performance Studies international"

A small graduate student conference is held at New York University to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the performance studies department. Peggy Phelan is the faculty director. To the surprise of the organizers, 110 people attend, with 43 coming from outside the U.S.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett organizes a "food and performance" event at the Westbeth theatre with a dinner featuring food from around the world.

Peggy Phelan: "The first conference in 1990 had the title "performance studies international" and we used the small ‘I’ there. Jon McKenzie was the one who thought of this 'solution' to the debate we had about making larger claims then we could justify, especially in those early days. The first conference was thought of by grad students in PS NYU -- Jon, Jackie Hayes and Robert Sember were [among] the core of a group of about 5 students [others were Cindy Rosenthal, Gary Maciag, and Laura Goostree (sp?)]."

Jon McKenzie: "I must admit I don’t recall the small "i" (or rather, I recall that all three letters were lower case ("psi"), thus not calling attention to the "i" per se), and thus I don’t recall being the one who came up with this solution. My recollection is that the "solution" was simply to call the conference "psi" rather than Performance Studies International (a name whose parodic overtones were not heard by some) and that this was a group decision. Peggy may be remembering that I was the one who first suggested to the dept student organization that we do a small conference: as I recall, it was BKG or Peggy who suggested we make the conference into a 10 year anniversary event."