CFP | Special Issue of American Music Perspectives: “Sound And Affect In Times Of Crisis”
Dan DiPiero’s pictureAnnouncement published by Dan DiPiero on Monday, July 25, 2022
Type:
Call for Papers
Date:
September 15, 2022
Subject Fields:
Music and Music History
Call for Papers

Special Issue of American Music Perspectives: “Sound and Affect in Times of Crisis”

As Walter Benjamin famously put it in 1940, “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.” And yet, as Stuart Hall would have it, each crisis is borne of specific conjunctures in unique constellations. Inspired by the inaugural Music and Sound Studies Working Group at the Cultural Studies Association 2022 conference, this special issue of American Music Perspectives invites submissions that help to think through the ways that music and sound relate to the socio-political valences of our current crisis conditions: the recent overturning of Roe Vs. Wade; the open legislative assault on LGBTQ+ communities via “don’t say gay” and anti-trans* bills; the continued targeting of racial minorities by both citizens and the state; the traumas and inflationary pressures wrought by the pandemic; the war in Ukraine; voter disenfranchisement and minority rule; the rapidly accelerating climate crisis, and more.

As music scholars reflecting on sound’s relationship to current events, we turn to affect theory as a promising framework for foregrounding the often oblique ways that sound and music can function in society, in addition to and beyond any semiotic connotations revealed through close-reading. Further, and following Kara Keeling’s reflections on Sun Ra, how might music have the potential to “affect vibrations and energy patterns, and hence, consciousness”? We also write here with an eye toward the necessity, as Ana Hofman’s “The romance with affect” argues, of attending to the repressive mobilizations of sound and music’s affects as equally as we do its progressive social potentialities.

With these questions in mind, we invite submissions of shorter articles on sound and music’s affective relations with society, broadly conceived. With this format, essays should of course draw from relevant theory, but need not engage with extensive literature reviews.

In particular, we are eager to consider papers dealing with:

Music’s non-linear relationships with politics
Sound/music, and identity
Sound/music’s relationships to crisis
Sonic mediations, or the effects of sound as transformed through relations of distribution, reception, and transduction in particular contexts
Sound/affect and critical theories (queer, feminist, critical race, political economic, performance, decolonial)

Particulars:

Please submit abstracts and brief bios to Christine Capetola (ccapetola@fullerton.edu) and Dan DiPiero (ddipiero@ithaca.edu) by September 15, 2022 with the subject line “AMP Submission.” If selected, full papers of between 2,500 and 4000 words (formatted in Chicago author-date), will be due November 1, 2022. The word count and deadlines are reflective of our efforts to encourage timely pieces that speak to the present moment.

Contact Info:
ddipiero@ithaca.edu

ccapetola@fullerton.edu

Contact Email:
ddipiero@ithaca.edu
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