CFP: Festival of Faith and Music (Calvin College, Michigan)

FESTIVAL OF FAITH AND MUSIC

CALVIN COLLEGE, GRAND RAPIDS, MI

2 - 4 APRIL 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Keynote Speaker: Cornel West

The Festival of Faith & Music is a biennial conference that brings together musicians, journalists, academics, students and lovers of music and popular culture to discuss diverse forms of popular music and issues of faith. We are interested in discovering and celebrating popular music that can be understood as rooted in conviction and/or engaged with themes of faith broadly conceived, including justice, truth, hope, epiphany, transcendence, and redemption, and in

hearing or interpreting popular music from faith perspectives. Calvin College is a Christian liberal arts college which seeks to study and engage popular culture. Our festival is not primarily concerned with the Christian music industry or limited to discussing only those artists who publicly embrace a specific religion. Rather, we hope to facilitate a broader conversation about all forms of popular music and our response to it as people of faith.

Past festivals have featured artists Emmylou Harris, Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, and David Bazan. For this year’s festival, we have invited The Hold Steady, Over The Rhine, and T Bone Burnett, and we anticipate the inclusion of many other artists. Our keynote speaker will be Cornel West, and other confirmed speakers include Makoto Fujimura, Josh Jackson (creator of Paste Magazine), Jessica Hopper, Terry Mattingly, Cathleen Falsani, and Andy Crouch.

We are seeking proposals for 20 minute (2,000-2,500 word) papers that address issues of faith in popular music and its various social and cultural contexts. We are particularly interested in papers related to our artists and speakers. Updates on confirmed artists and speakers can be found on the festival website: http://www.calvin.edu/admin/sao/festival/.

Please email a 300-word abstract (attached in Word format) to Drs. Benita Wolters-Fredlund and Mary McCampbell at ffmcfp at gmail.com. by 20 January 2009. Queries are also welcome.