Race-ing Queer Music Scholarship: A Symposium in conjunction with the 2016 AMS/SMT Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC
CFP Deadline: 15 Feb 2016
Within the academy?and not least music scholarship?the adjective queer
is frequently deployed as a radical modifier: queering history,
queering culture, queering the pitch. This usage presupposes an
intrinsic alterity. As if queerness necessarily represents the largest
measure of difference from the norm. As if queerness?in and of
itself?carries with it a discursive perversity, without which
?history,? ?culture,? and ?the pitch? remain neutral categories of
knowledge.
One problem with this approach is the assumption of whiteness that it
writes onto queerness, history, culture and pitch alike?an error
rendered particularly acute in studies of the Western musical canon
though present in scholarship on music more broadly, historical,
analytic, and ethnographic alike. This panel calls for papers that
confront this problem head on. Rather than queering race studies in
music scholarship, we aim to race queer music scholarship, unpacking
the structural ellipses and disciplinary violence of our current
practice and sketching the outlines of a richer, critically stronger
approach to our thinking about music and sound in its relationship
with queer bodies.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to the chair of the
program committee, Emily Wilbourne, by Monday 15 February, at
emily.wilbourne -at- qc.cuny.edu. Please include your name, affiliation,
contact details, and the title of your paper in the body of the email;
the abstract should be free of identifying materials.
Funding will be available for graduate student and independent scholar
presenters.
Papers given at the symposium will be considered for publication in a
special issue of Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture
Co-conveners: Hedy Law, Stephan Pennington, and Emily Wilbourne.
Program Committee: Emily Wilbourne, Tes Slominski, and Gavin Lee.
Contact: emily.wilbourne -at- qc.cuny.edu