Call for Papers
Popular Music Worlds, Popular Music Histories
IASPM 15th biennial conference
University of Liverpool, UK
July 13-17, 2009
For its 15th biennial conference, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) invites papers which explore the various connections and disconnections between popular musical worlds and popular music histories. Given Liverpool’s important place in relation to both areas, it will provide an ideal setting for papers submitted to the following streams:
Studying Popular Music: A Reassessment
Convenor: Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa
Since the first attempts in the late 1970s and 1980s much has been done in terms of adapting analytical tools from several disciplines to the study of popular music. This stream welcomes papers dealing with the analysis of specific aspects of popular music (timbre, texture, prosody, melody, rhythm, harmony, arranging, etc.) or case studies of particular songs or instrumental pieces from any theoretical perspective.
Popular Music and Technology in a Historical Context
Convenor: Carlo Nardi
Different intellectual technologies have contributed to the way people produce and listen to popular music, be it orality, printing, recording or even the Internet. This stream welcomes papers dealing with the technological impacts upon popular music practices, including questions from cultural, aesthetic, ideological, economic, sociological, historical, legal or musicological perspectives.
Music, History and Cultural Memory
Convenor: Shane Homan
This stream seeks contributions that investigate popular music histories and the methodological challenges in their researching and writing. What particular historical narratives and agendas emerge, and what are their effects? The stream includes work that examines the role of popular music history in wider national histories and their presence in both informal (e.g. fan club newsletters) and formal (e.g. museums) contexts. Papers are also welcome that explore the role of ‘unofficial’ / ‘shadow’ music histories that challenge or offer alternatives to grander narratives and industry mythologies, to comprehend a politics of cultural memory studies in terms of what is officially preserved from oblivion and what is socially excluded from remembrance.
Music, Mediation and Place
Convenor: Geoff Stahl
The intersection of place-making and music-making as a site of mediation is a complicated one. From the use of certain music scenes or moments which have been mobilized as heritage myths and tourist packages, to issues related to the use of micro and mass media to bind musicmakers together–locally, regionally, nationally, and globally–the intersection of time and place as a highly mediated process has proven a vexed and complex phenomenon. We welcome papers which explore the many issues relating to music histories, representations, discourses, spaces and places, as well as those that consider the various research methods which might be best be deployed to capture this phenomenon.
Musical Struggles
Convenor: Michael Drewett
Being a musician inevitably involves struggle: Musicians starting out struggle to make it, musicians ‘in the margins’ struggle towards mainstream coverage, some musicians involve themselves in political struggle to do with identity issues and/or social issues, while in contexts of censorship, repression and control some musicians struggle to be heard. Even commercially successful musicians can become embroiled in corporate struggle over contractual obligations. This stream seeks contributions which document and conceptualise such struggles within a socio-political framework.
Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words (one page) and should be sent in the following format:
Title
Presenter(s)
Institution
Email
Abstract
Keywords (five keywords that best describe your topic)
Abstracts should be sent to BOTH the conference address and the convenor of your stream. The conference address is:
Please label your abstract with your last name (i.e. smith.rtf, or smith.doc), not the title.
The deadline for abstracts is July 1, 2008.
We will notify participants no later than November 1st, 2008.
We look forward to seeing you.
The IASPM-International Executive