CFP: Against and Beyond: Subversion and Transgression in Drama, Theatre, Film and Media (Lodz, Poland)

AGAINST AND BEYOND: SUBVERSION AND TRANSGRESSION IN DRAMA, THEATRE, FILM AND MEDIA
UNIVERSITY OF LÓDZ, POLAND
22 -24 OCTOBER 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

The Department of Studies in Drama, Pre-1800 English Literature, Film and Media invites you to attend the 2009 Conference at the University of Lódz, Poland.

Transgressive movement against or beyond the norm seems to be universally present in all ages and genres of literary and artistic creativity. Openly defiant or covertly subversive, rebellion against social standards that define public and personal roles, ideals and spaces remains an artistic instrument of development while liminal sensitivity or extreme experience continue to threaten the prescribed from the allegory of medieval theatre and poetry to the neo-realism of the drama of the 21st century.

It is therefore the aim of this conference to approach the category of extreme and subversive experience and its literary, theatrical, dramatic and cinematographic representations. The organisers would like to commence the discussion from the premise that the category of experience viewed as an extreme transgression or as a redefinition of received categories is a useful tool to diagnose contemporary literature as well as contemporary readings of older works and authors. When related to formal aspects of artistic work as well as to plot, the concept of transgression and subversion opens ways of reading canonical works as components of bigger religious, social and political structures which these works may oppose or depict as alienating, inimical and oppressive.

Suggested themes and topics:
* politics of transgression,
* techniques of subversion,
* storytelling as an act of political/historical/religious subversion,
* spatial conditioning of transgression,
* the city versus the country: modes of geographic transgression,
* powers of subversion in private and public domains,
* transgression and the body,
* cathartic power of suffering,
* subversive religious illumination,
* dance, ecstasy, ritual as ways of experiencing the Other,
* mass media and virtual reality as ways of transgressing the real and the actual.

The list of keynote speakers to be announced soon.

Submissions of topics and abstracts (250 words) should reach the organisers no later than June 15th 2009. Conference fee: 300 PLN.

Organising Committee:
Prof. Jadwiga Uchman
Prof. Andrzej Wicher
mgr Piotr Spyra
mgr Katarzyna Ojrzynska

For submissions and enquiries please contact: mgr Piotr Spyra at: lodz.conference [AT] gmail.com

CFP: Viral Ports, Virtual Currents: Interconnections of Media, the Arts and the Everyday in Southeast Asia and its Diasporas (Riverside)

VIRAL PORTS, VIRTUAL CURRENTS: INTERCONNECTIONS OF MEDIA, THE ARTS AND THE EVERYDAY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND ITS DIASPORAS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

2 - 4 OCTOBER 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Sponsored by SEATRiP (Southeast Asian Studies) group

Keynote speaker: Rolando Tolentino

http://www.seatrip.ucr.edu

Media use has escalated greatly throughout the world, leading to more extensive and varied visibility of the arts. Using metaphors of the ocean in cooperation with the viral and the virtual ties popular imaginaries of Southeast Asia with the ability of media to spread and replicate "virally".

As Jean Burgess uses Henry Jenkins' argument about the "spreadability" of values within the dynamic relationship between media and cultural production/consumption, "Through reuse, reworking and redistribution, spreadable media content 'gains greater resonance in the culture, taking on new meanings, finding new audiences, attracting new markets, and generating new values'" (Burgess 2008, 3). Media outputs then become ports of contact and inspiration for other members of the social network. In this fascinating process, the arts are inevitably expanding and evolving into an outlet or carrier for (re)thinking identities in relation to socio-political and economic issues, discussed and solved in what Ien Ang et.al. calls the "field of culture" (2000). This field contains uneven complexities, contradictory approaches, avoidances, identifications, disidentifications, collusion and conflict that form, articulate, and contest hybrid identities "in and through artistic expression, media representation, popular culture consumption, cultural criticism and intellectual reflection" (Ang et. al., 2000:xxx).

The emphasis on the arts and media in this conference should open more comprehensive ways of thinking about Southeast Asia and its diasporas as a whole. This conference reflects on Arjun Appadurai's call for a "new architecture of area studies" which is driven by the concept of process geographies-areas are spaces of action, interaction, and motion (Burgess 2004: 127). The theme of 'arts and media in everyday life' engages with these geographies in motion by highlighting the dynamic, multidirectional networks of culture within Southeast Asia and through its diasporic communities throughout the world in addition to addressing complexities that make a contribution to developing new approaches of thinking.

We define media broadly to include (but is not limited to) genres of film, TV, radio, Internet, digital games. Media connects with various forms of the arts such as dance, music, and theatre that bind and detach Southeast Asia and its diasporas. We invite graduate students, artists, scholars, and community/cultural workers to submit work based on the theme.

Viral Video Festival: Please read more about viral video upload instructions after sample topics.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

*Reality Bites: Southeast Asian youth culture, viral videos and the influence of transnational television programming.

*Herzfeld's Arenas of Agency: Sensing the feel and sound of Southeast Asian diasporas.

*"Bebot, Ikaw Ang Aking ." Pop Music Links to Philippine Transnational Ethnic Identities

* Everyday Nationalism in the Arts: Artists joining together in national expression from the ground up.

*Capital Movements: Revitalizing classical Cambodian dance through tourism, globalization, and political policy.

*Upload/Download: Internet ties and communicating community through cyberspace.

*Screening SEADs: ecological filmic representations of performing Southeast Asian diasporic subjects.

*Scoring High Karma: the Ethics (Video) Game sharing Thai Buddhist morals around the world.

*Indonesian Pop Divas negotiating Islam and Sex for the record.

*The Culture Show Wars: Fighting for community and identity in southern California college Vietnamese culture shows.

*Media fiksi, Mekanis berharap: Nationalism, science fiction, and media imagery in modern Indonesian graphic novels.

*TRANS-itions in Sound, Venus Fly Trap: music video vixens engendering space and feminine bodies for multisensory consumption.

Call for VIRAL VIDEO Uploads based on the conference theme! 

We invite submissions of viral videos of no more than 5:00 minutes from all over the world exploring our conference theme. Share your stories and issues about Southeast Asia and its diasporas! Please upload your video to http://www.youtube.com and send us your YouTube screenname and email address. You may also send us a hard copy of your video on CD through snail mail. Please make sure videos are saved with extensions that can be read in both MAC and PC format (e.g. avi, mov, mpg, wmv). Early submissions are encouraged. 

Deadline for submission is September 4, 2009. You may send hard copies to:

SEATRiP

c/o 2009 Conference

3149 Interdisciplinary Building

University of California, Riverside

900 University Avenue

Riverside, CA 92521

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Papers may be submitted individually or as part of organized panels. Creative panel formats that encourage discussion and exchange are especially welcomed.

INDIVIDUAL PAPER proposals should include the full title and a brief abstract of the paper (250 words or less). Individual papers will be assigned to a panel according to topic and should be short enough to present in 15 minutes.

A SELF- ORGANIZED PANEL consists of 3 or 4 papers organized around a common topic or theme, and a chair (who may also be one of the panelists). All panel proposals should include: a title and brief abstract of the panel (250 words or less) along with a title and brief abstract for each paper (250 words or less). Panels will run for an hour and a half, and papers should be short enough to allow for questions and discussion.

All panel and paper proposals must include the name and full contact information of all participants, and can be submitted through email to paul.atienza@email.ucr.edu

Please address all inquiries to the email address shown above. Submissions are due no later than June 15, 2009. Notification of acceptance: July 6, 2009.

REFERENCES:

Ang, Ian, et al. Alter/Asians: Asian Australians in Art, Media and Popular Culture Sydney: Pluto Press, 2000.

Burgess, Chris. "The Asian studies 'crisis': Putting cultural studies into Asian studies and Asia into cultural studies," in International Journal of Asian Studies 1.1 (2004) 121-136.

Burgess, Jean. "'ALL YOUR CHOCOLATE RAIN ARE BELONG TO US'? Viral Video, YouTube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture," in Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.), (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008) 101-109.

CFP: First Annual International Crime, Media and Popular Culture Studies (Indiana State University)

FIRST ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CRIME, MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES CONFERENCE: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY EXPLORATION

INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

5 - 7 OCTOBER 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Early Abstract Submission is Highly Encouraged.

The Indiana State University Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice would like to invite you to attend the "First Annual International Crime, Media and Popular Culture Studies Conference: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration" to be held October 5th, 6th & 7th, 2009
at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana. Please visit our website for further details regarding abstract submission, registration and for a detailed description of our Keynote Speakers and Featured Speakers. Please feel free to forward this notice to any colleagues or
graduate students that you feel might be interested.

Conference website:
www.indstate.edu/ccj/popcultureconference

Indiana State University is conveniently located less than 1 hour from Indianapolis International Airport traveling west on Interstate 70. Indiana State University is also within 3-5 hours driving time from Chicago, Illinois; Springfield, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Columbia,
Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; Lexington, Kentucky; Cincinnati, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; and Nashville, Tennessee.

Early Conference Hotel Reservations are Highly Encouraged.

Once again given that this is a cross-disciplinary conference please feel free to forward this call for papers to any individuals or departments that you feel might have an interest in the conference (criminology, criminal justice, sociology, anthropology, public policy, psychology, race & ethnic studies, women’s studies, music, media studies, journalism, literature, film studies, history).

Featured Speakers:
Jeff Ferrell, Ph.D.
Texas Christian University

Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D
Eastern Kentucky University

David L. Altheide, Ph.D
Arizona State University

Frankie Y. Bailey, Ph.D.
University of Albany

Gregory Snyder, Ph.D.
Baruch College, CUNY

Nickie Phillips, Ph.D.
St. Francis College

Staci Strobl, Ph.D.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Vikas Kumar Gumbhir, Ph.D.
Gonzaga University

Brett A. Mervis, Ph.D. Candidate
University of South Florida

Robert D. Weide, Ph.D. Candidate
New York University


Keynote Speakers:
Taylor Mali
Four Time National Poetry Slam Champion and One of the Original Poets on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents “Def Poetry”

Stephen Belber
Acclaimed Playwright, Screenplay Writer and Director
(TV Credits Include Staff Writer for “Law & Order SVU” and “Rescue Me”)

Sincerely,

Franklin T. Wilson, Ph.D.
Conference Chair
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Indiana State University
Holmstedt Hall 230
Terre Haute, Indiana 47809
fwilson2@indstate.edu

CFP: Regulated Liberties: Negotiating Freedom in Art, Culture and Media (Turku, Finland)

REGULATED LIBERTIES: NEGOTIATING FREEDOM IN ART, CULTURE AND MEDIA
RETHINKING ART STUDIES (REARS) CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF TURKU, FINLAND
20 - 22 AUGUST 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANELS

Freedom is a heavily charged notion with a vast conceptual width. Yet, the question of freedom and its regulation remains inadequately studied in the field of art, culture and media. Research has often relied conceptually on dichotomies and concentrated on revealing different kinds of power structures and forms of oppression, which tends to simplify the complex nature of Freedom and constraint. The conference is dedicated to rethinking cultural power in new inventive ways not based on a dichotomous logic of domination and resistance. The concept of "regulated liberties" denotes a more complex relationship of negotiation between the dominant and its subjects.

The aim of the conference is to relate art, culture and media to questions concerning freedom, emancipation and resistance. The overall conference topic disperses on the theoretical fields of subjectivity, social structures, and representation. The conference provides a forum for the development of innovative and creative research concerning temporal/spatial dimensions, genres and identity production in art, culture and media.

It is with great regret that we have to inform you of the recent passing of one of our keynote speakers, Professor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Professor Sedgwick passed away on April 12th in New York. In the wake of this loss we have the honour of welcoming two replacing keynote speakers, philosopher and political theorist Brian Massumi and artist, theorist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger. In light of these changes, we are extending our call for papers to enable the
participation of those researchers who are inspired by the new keynote speakers. There is room for a limited number of new papers and panels.

*Keynote speakers:*

* Angela McRobbie (The Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
* Brian Massumi (Department of Communication, University of Montréal, Canada)
* Bracha L. Ettinger (Media & Communications, European Graduate School, Switzerland)
* Colin B. Grant (The Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, UK)
* Marianne Liljeström (The School of Art Studies, University of Turku, Finland)
* Altti Kuusamo (The School of Art Studies, University of Turku, Finland)

*Proposals for panels and individual papers:*

The conference organizing committee invites proposals for panels and individual papers. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

* How have the concepts of freedom and emancipation been employed in the context of art, culture and media?
* In what ways do culture and art regulate conduct in (neo)liberal regimes and vice versa?
* How do culturally sanctioned representations impose hegemonic identities?
* In what ways should genres be (re)thought in art? Are they regulating regimes?
* Under what circumstances does resistance take place, and is it necessarily conscious and intentional?
* In what ways are subjects produced both as objects of regulatory norms and as agents capable of resisting these norms?
* How does embodiment work as a corporeal nexus for several axis of power, as a gendered, racialised, and sexualised signifier of multiple regulatory norms?
* How could the role of institutions and economy be conceptualised in new and productive ways?

Abstracts should be sent in the following format:
(1) Title
(2) Presenter(s)
(3) Institutional affiliation
(4) Email
(5) Abstract.

Panel proposals should include:
(1) Title of the panel
(2) Name and contact information of the chair
(3) Abstracts of the presenters.

Please use your surname as the document title. Abstracts (200–300 words) for twenty-minute papers as well as proposals for 2 hour panels should be submitted as an email attachment to reglib(a)utu.fi by *May 14th 2009*. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by the end of
May 2009.

The preliminary conference programme, including already accepted papers and panels, is available: www.hum.utu.fi/regulated_liberties/ For more information, contact us at reglib(at)utu.fi.

The School of Art Studies, University of Turku, Finland, organizes the conference.

CFP: Consequences of Wagner (Portugal)

CONSEQUENCES OF WAGNER
CENTRO DE ESTUDOS DE SOCIOLOGIA E ÉSTETICA MUSICAL
LISBON, PORTUGAL
27 - 28 NOVEMBER 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

Keynote speakers to include:
John Deathridge, King’s College, London
William Weber, California State University

CESEM (the Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical, http://www2.fcsh.unl.pt/cesem/), a research unit at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal), is to host an international Conference on the theme ‘Consequences of Wagner’, to mark the 100th anniversary of the first staging of Wagner’s Ring in Portugal. The Conference venue will be the very theatre where these historical performances took place: the Teatro Nacional de S. Carlos (Lisbon Opera House).

The Conference forms part of an ongoing research project funded by the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), and its focus, as implied in the title, is the overall impact of Richard Wagner’s works and ideas on Western culture, with a particular emphasis on the movements and phenomena (the ‘consequences’) that could be said to have been triggered off by Wagner even though they might not necessarily fall under the heading of ‘Wagner reception studies’ in the strict sense.

We are particularly (but not exclusively) interested in topics such as the theory, aesthetics and history of opera staging and performance, the status of music and music drama in fin-de-siècle culture, Wagner and modernism, eroticism and sexuality, post-Wagnerian compositional techniques and musical styles, the appropriation of Wagner by artists from different media and nationalities, the repercussions of ‘the case of Wagner’ in historiography, philosophy, politics and popular culture, Wagner as myth and the wider implications of Wagnerism and anti-Wagnerism.

The official language of the Conference will be English. A selection of papers will be considered for publication in book form.

We invite scholars from various disciplines to contribute to this international Conference. Please send abstracts (max. 300 words) for 20-minute papers (to be followed by 10 minutes’ discussion), in English, plus a short biographical note, to the Conference organizers no later than 30 June 2009:

Paulo F. de Castro: pf.castro at fcsh.unl.pt
Gabriela Cruz: ggcruz at fcsh.unl.pt
David Cranmer: cranmer at netcabo.pt

Notification of acceptance will be given by 20 July 2009. The Organization is unable to cover any expenses, but it may be able to help with finding accommodation at special rates.

For further information, please contact: pf.castro at fcsh.unl.pt

King's College London Summer School

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON SUMMER SCHOOL

KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON

6 - 24 JULY 2009 AND 27 JULY - 14 AUGUST 2009

We invite students and others who want to learn from all over the world to join King's for our university summer school. This year our programme of study includes two university-level courses in music with outstanding, research-based teaching and the added experience of world-class cultural institutions in London.

The courses offer a high quality intensive learning experience. Visits to London's concert and opera venues, libraries and archives, and interviews with leading artistic directors and management (subject to course) are integrated into the study programme.

July, 6th - 24th: royals and royalties: MUSIC AND SPECTACLE IN LONDON

http://www.blogger.com/www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/summerschool/arts/prospectus/session1/musicroyals.html

July, 27th – Aug, 14th: BBC PROMENADE CONCERTS: MUSIC, MEDIA AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

http://www.blogger.com/www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/summerschool/arts/prospectus/session2/proms.html

Course Leader: Dr. Wiebke Thormählen PhD (Cornell University), MMus (KCL)

Courses will be available for credit, subject to the agreement of your home university.

For general enquiries or to see a syllabus, please contact: summerschool at kcl.ac.uk

CFP: Pop Culture Tools in the Music Classroom (publication)

POP CULTURE TOOLS IN THE MUSIC CLASSROOM

DEADLINE: 1 AUGUST 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Authors are invited to submit potential contributions to an essay collection on using popular culture in undergraduate- and graduate-level music courses. The essays should focus on teaching and learning tools derived from popular culture, and may also include generalized considerations of popular-culture texts. The collection is intended to serve as a framework for course design or as a supplementary text in either pedagogy or music classes. Approaches
concerning methods of using popular culture to address either art or vernacular musics, from the disciplines of musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory and analysis, and performance studies are welcome. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• electronic media such as mp3s and other digital audio; Ipod culture; streamed radio
• multimedia sources, including YouTube, music videos, television shows, movies, soundtracks
• videogames such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution, and others
• online environments such as Second Life
• covers, versioning, parodies, mashups

Essays should be 6,000-10,000 words in length and conform to Chicago Manual of Style guidelines. Authors will be responsible for acquiring any necessary permissions for copyrighted materials included in their works. Text should be submitted as Word files (.doc or .rtf format), with musical examples in .tif, .pdf, .jpg, .gif, or .bmp format (.tifs are preferred).

The collection will be published by Scarecrow Press in 2010. Materials should be submitted electronically to Nicole Biamonte at by August 1, 2009. Please include:
1) a cover letter or message, including the author's name and essay title
2) an abstract of approximately 200 words
3) the proposed contribution, with author's name and other identifying information omitted
4) a brief biography (50 to 100 words)
5) a current cv

CFP: Diasporas, Migration and Media: Crossing Boundaries, New Directions (Utrecht)

DIASPORAS, MIGRATION AND MEDIA: CROSSING BOUNDARIES, NEW DIRECTIONS
UTRECHT UNIVERSITY, NETHERLANDS
6 - 7 NOVEMBER 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

Sponsored by the DIASPORA, MIGRATION AND MEDIA SECTION -
European Communication Research and Education Association
Co-hosted by Nottingham Trent University and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece


Studying the relationship between diasporas and the media presents several challenges and issues that are at the core of humanities, social sciences, anthropology, and cultural and media studies.

In the last two decades, an increase in the number of theories and amount of empirical research in the field, with topics ranging from Diaspora, mobility, migration, ethnicity, cosmopolitanism, postcolonialism, identity politics, representation, and practices of media production and consumption, have enhanced our understanding of the everyday lives of Diasporas and migrants.

Through this process, the area of Diaspora, migration and media has evolved to embrace different theoretical and methodological perspectives, resulting in a plethora of work, and as a result, consolidating its position as an important area of investigation.

On the other hand, any emerging canon needs to be criticized and challenged if the field is to retain its dynamism. In addition, the increasingly vocal critiques against multiculturalism give rise to defensive writing: is it time to develop more positive and forceful lines of enquiry.

The aim of this workshop, then is to address the state-of-the-art in the field by inviting colleagues - academics, non-academics, researchers and PhD students - to map the diverse areas of investigation and/or present ongoing empirical and theoretical work that might offer a critique as well as point out new directions in the field.

We invite abstracts that address the following themes, but would be happy to consider proposals which fall outside of them:

--The local/global diasporic cultural experiences

--Dynamics of migration and memory

--Dynamics of Representation, discourse and language

--Subjectivity, emotion and identity

--Diaspora, youth and media

--Diasporic Audiences

--Diaspora and Queer theory

--Visual Cultures and Diasporas/Migrants

--Music and Diasporas

--Cultural Citizenship

--Cultural policy and Diaspora

--Web 2.0, social media and Diasporas: what are they doing for Diasporas and minorities?

--The backlash against multiculturalism and/in the media

--Diasporic/minority media: what is new?

--Urban environments and multicultural encounters

--Diasporic generations, communication and media

The deadline for submissions is 16 June 2009.

Registration fee: £50

For further information please contact:

olga.bailey@ntu.ac.uk

CFP: Mediating Jazz (University of Salford)

MEDIATING JAZZ
UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD
26 - 27 NOVEMBER 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

An international conference hosted by the Popular Music Research Centre, University of Salford.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Krin Gabbard (SUNY), author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture, Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture, and Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema

Mediating Jazz is a two-day multi-disciplinary conference that brings together the leading researchers in the field of New Jazz Studies. The conference itself will comprise four key strands, each of which addresses the overarching theme of mediation in jazz:

1. Jazz and the Media
We wish to explore the way in which media representation impacts on jazz discourse. The review panel will welcome papers that examine the way in which jazz is represented through various media from Hollywood film to television documentary, sleeve notes to journalism.

2. Performance and the Body
Musicians often promote the performance of jazz as an unmediated experience. We invite papers that interrogate this assumption, exploring the relationship between performance and different types of mediation. This could include discussions of jazz as a transcendent art or a gendered
construct, as well as examining the mythologies of improvisation, musicianship and the ‘jazz life’, and the codification of performance practice.

3. Politics and Identity
Within the jazz mainstream, the radical politics of the 1960s has arguably been replaced with a sense of homogenised culture, devoid of explicit race and class issues. This strand explores the role mediation plays in the growth and development of identities alongside the promotion/subversion of political messages.

4. Jazz Cultures and Narratives
This strand explores jazz as both narrative trope and changing cultural signifier. We welcome papers that explore the concept of jazz from a range of disciplinary perspectives, encouraging a discursive approach to the cultural study of jazz.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to Dr Tony Whyton
(t.whyton@salford.ac.uk) by Wednesday 27 May 2009.

Review panel: Dr Tony Whyton (Salford), Dr Nicholas Gebhardt (Lancaster), Dr Catherine Tackley (Open University) and Professor George McKay (Salford)

CFP: The Society for Ethnomusicology (Mexico City)

SOCIETY FOR ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
19 - 22 NOVEMBER 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

The Society for Ethnomusicology will hold its 54th annual meeting on November 19-22, 2009, in Mexico City, hosted by Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical Carlos Chavez del Instituto Nacional de los Artes; Escuela Nacional de Música, Universidad Autónoma de México; Escuela Superior de Música, Instituto Nacional de los Artes; Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares de la Dirección General de Culturas Populares; Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología; Comisión de los Pueblos Indios; Fonoteca del Centro Nacional de las Artes of the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes; and the Secretaría de Cultura del Departamento del Distrito Federal.

The conference theme for the 2009 meeting will be “Borderless Ethnomusicologies.” Topics will include: 1) Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and Intangible Heritage; 2) Instruments and Organologies; 3) Ethnomusicology in the Megalopolis; 4) Musical Borderlands; 5) Social Dimensions of New Media; 6) Ethnomusicology of/in Mexico/Latin America. Proposals on any other topics relevant to the field of ethnomusicology are welcome. Also encouraged are workshops on the following topics: Professional Development, Copyright, Multiculturalist Pedagogies, Multimedia Scholarship, and other practical applications.

For a full version of the Call for Proposals (including submission guidelines) and preliminary conference information, please visit www.ethnomusicology.org and select “Conferences.” The deadline for submission of proposals is March 16, 2009.

In conjunction with the 2009 meeting, there will be a pre-conference symposium, “Music Research in Mexico,” on November 18, 2009. Information about the symposium will be posted at www.ethnomusicology.org.

CFP: Music and Media IMS Pre-Conference (Amsterdam)

IMS PRE-CONFERENCE: LAUNCHING OF THE STUDY GROUP MaM (MUSIC AND MEDIA)
ORGAN PARK, AMSTERDAM
4 - 5 JULY 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

Music and Media will be launched as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary IMS Study Group in a pre-conference preceding the joint IAML-IMS conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Study Group seeks to examine and explore diverse aspects relevant to the theme of ‘mediatizing music’. We are looking for perspectives from scholars engaged in the fields of musicology, media studies, film studies, theatre etc.

Papers, reports and works-in-progress are now invited for submission on issues related, but not limited to any of the following themes:

* the implications of mediatizing music for performance practice
* the implications of mediatizing music in terms of ´liveness´
* the way media have changed the compositional process
* the economics behind the mediatization of music
* (the functioning of) music in television and film
* (the functioning of) music in virtual worlds and games.

Papers will also be considered on any subject related to the above. Abstracts (of 300 words max.) should be submitted by Sunday 1st March 2009.

Abstracts in Word or RTF formats should be send to Emile Wennekes as follows:

-author(s), academic affiliation, e-mail address, title of the abstract, the abstract, technical requirements (piano, overhead, power point, etc).

The Organ Park, ‘Orgelpark’, is provided with modern audio/visual equipment and has a variety of musical instruments that can be used, including a grand piano.

Publication of the contributions in book form is under consideration.

ORGANIZING CHAIR:

Prof. Dr. Emile Wennekes, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, emile.wennekes[at] let.uu.nl

INTRODUCTION:

Music plays an important role in media, both in old and certainly in new media: commercials, games, films, ring tones and the like. The other way around, media play an increasing role in music. They have changed the compositional process and characteristics of style; media severely influences performances, composing techniques, the way of recording and visualizing music. What are the theoretical and philosophical consequences of mediatized music? What are the economics behind these processes of mediatization? What role does the process of ‘remediation’(Bolter & Grusin, 2000), from LP to MP3 and 4, play? How has mediatization influenced performance practice, what was the ‘phonograph effect?’ (Katz, 1999). What do processes of mediatizing music mean in terms of ‘liveness’ (Auslander, 1999), ‘animated liveness’ (Wennekes, 2009) and/or ‘immersion’ (Grau, 2003)?


-Auslander, Philip, Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. (New York: Routledge, 1999).
-Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard, Remediating: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000).
-Grau, Oliver, Virtual art: From Illusion to Immersion. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003)
-Katz, Mark, The Phonograph Effect: The Influence of Recording on Listener, Performer, Composer, 1900-1940. PhD Thesis University of Michigan, 1999.
-Wennekes, Emile, ‘Brief encounters of a third kind: First Life live concerts in Second Life concert venues’. In: Thea Brejzek, Wolfgang Greisenegger and Lawrence Wallen (eds.), Monitoring Scenography 2: Space and Truth / Raum und Wahrheit. Institute for Design and Technology (idt) Zurich: Zurich University of the Arts, October 2009.

CFP: Migrating Music: Media, Politics and Style (SOAS)

MIGRATING MUSIC: MEDIA, POLITICS AND STYLE: AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES,
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
10 - 11 JULY 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

Over the last twenty years or so there has been much interest in music and diaspora, that is in migrating music. No doubt this interest is historically grounded. Movement of peoples and their music across the world has been occurring to an unprecedented extent and in novel ways. Researchers in a variety of disciplines have then responded by studying musical flows and the formation of hybrid styles, but also the way in which apparently similar music can mean quite different things in different contexts. We might sum up the overarching framework is one in which researchers focus on the (largely benign) diversification and pluralisation of musical meaning and experience.

We do not seek to overturn this framework. Quite simply, it taps an important part of the reality of migrating music in the contemporary period. But we do want to bring up a number of problems and issues, and call on colleagues to think about what these might mean.

Media. Mediation has been crucial to the global movement of musics, from the hymnal to the Web 2.0. Diasporas take recordings with them when they move; broadcasters and record companies cater to them in new lands; 'World Music' was launched as a marketing and media category. What, then, is the impact of mediation on migrating music, and are diasporas and host communities mere recipients, or rather active shapers of their musical diets?

Politics. The orthodoxy of today is that musical migration is predominantly a Good Thing, and that hybridity always has a progressive dimension. By the same token authenticity has become a straw target. But can the authentic be a significant value for musical cultures as they are relocated around the world? And were early commentators entirely wrong to worry about 'Americanisation' or 'Westernisation'? Indeed are there new models that take into account 'Bollywoodisation' and the effects of other international culture industries? Does a focus on hybridisation sometimes obscure larger relations of economic, cultural, and aesthetic domination?

Style. Hybridity is rarely used in verb form. But the processes of stylistic transformation wrought by musical migration are very much about action - making change across time, space, codes and cultures. What are these 'trans' processes? Do they always depend on mixing, or can new migrant styles emerge from endogenous reference back to home styles? And how far do music makers and audiences consciously strive to create the new.

We invite proposals for papers which address these and related questions from across the disciplines, including (ethno)musicology, cultural and media studies, sociology, anthropology, history and performance studies. The conference is part of the AHRC research project based at the Open University, Tuning In: Diasporic Contact Zones @ BBC World Service. So contributions which concern international broadcasting and/or the BBC are particularly welcome. We are also keen to receive proposals from practitioners - music makers, journalists and broadcasters.

Proposals for 20 minute papers should be between 150 and 200 words in length. Themed panels are welcome too. For panel proposals please submit 3 paper abstracts together with a panel title, a 50 word panel rationale, and the name of your panel convenor/chair.

Proposal forms are available from the Conference's web page on the Tuning In website. Please see link below: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/events/migratingmusic.htm

Please send to Karen Ho at K.D.Ho@open.ac.uk. Closing date for submission is 22nd February, 2009.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Timothy Taylor - Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, UCLA

Sara Cohen - Professor and Director of the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool

Charlie Gillett - Journalist and award winning presenter of 'Charlie Gillett's World of Music', BBC World

Service in conversation with Kevin Robins, Visiting Professor, Istanbul Bilgi University

Martin Stokes - University Fellow in Music, St Johns College, Oxford University

Ruth Finnegan - Visiting Professor of Sociology, The Open University

CONFERENCE CONVENORS
Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck, The Open University

CONFERENCE ADMINISTRATORS
Karen Ho and Josine Opmeer, CRESC (Open and Manchester Universities)

CFP: IASA 2009 (International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, Greece)

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOUND AND AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVES (IASA)

20 - 25 SEPTEMBER 2009

ATHENS, GREECE

CALL FOR PAPERS

2009 IASA CONFERENCE: “Towards a new kind of Archive? The Digital Philosophy in Audiovisual Archives”

Submission Deadline: January 30th 2009

The Organising Committee of the IASA 2009 Annual Conference invites presentation proposals for the 40th IASA Annual Conference, to be held September 20-25, 2009, in Athens, Greece, hosted by the Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive.

Presentation proposals are due January 30th, 2009, on the following themes:

* Archives, Libraries and Museums. Moment of Truth - Time to Converge? 

* The disappearing Archive I: the loss of physical substance through digitisation 

* The disappearing Archive II: aging and physical deterioration of analogue media 

* The disappearing Archive III: obsolete carriers but no replay equipment 

* Born to die? Selection policies in the 21st century 

* Between archivists and users, taking advantage of the archive 

* Digital preservation and audiovisual preservation: Is there a divide? 

* 40 years of IASA 

* The role of the National Audiovisual Archives 

* Archiving the web and the new media audiovisual content 

* Ethics of digital archives 

Please find all conference information as well as the submission form on the conference website:

http://www.iasa2009.com

Presenters will be notified of acceptance by March 15, 2009.

IASA offers travel grants ( http://www.iasa-web.org/travel_grant.asp ), the chance of which increases if you present a paper! And even more if you or your institution is a IASA-member.

Many developping countries now qualify for half-price institutional membership in IASA! (see http://www.iasa-web.org/rates.asp for membership information)

CFP: Internet Attractions - AHRC Workshop on Ephemeral Media (Nottingham)

INTERNET ATTRACTIONS: ONLINE VIDEO AND USER-GENERATED EPHEMERA

AHRC WORKSHOP ON EPHEMERAL MEDIA

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

23 - 24 JUNE 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS – 10th DECEMBER 2008
http://www.ephemeralmedia.co.uk/

Key speakers: Professor Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths), Professor Barbara Klinger (Indiana), Hugh Hancock (Strange Company), Emily Renshaw-Smith (Current TV - to be confirmed)

The emergence of new media technologies in the 1990s and 2000s, specifically the rise of digital and Internet technology, has been linked to fundamental changes in the media environment, shaping newly emerging circuits of production and consumption and propagating a cultural landscape where media seem available everywhere and all the time. This AHRC-sponsored workshop examines a particular feature of our accelerated media world - the growth of the brief or ‘ephemeral’ texts that exist beyond and between the films, television programmes, and radio broadcasts more commonly isolated for analysis.

What does ephemeral mean? In the context of the workshop it connotes short-form media (i.e. texts that are no more than a few minutes long) but also media which are fleeting in the way they circulate, or that are often overlooked within mainstream academic study. ‘Ephemeral media’ offers a rubric to designate and explore some of the key strategies, forms and practices that are helping producers and publics alike to negotiate today’s fast-changing mediascape. More generally, it invites historical and theoretical reflection on the significance of screen ephemera - on those forms of screen culture that, whilst momentary, remain active components of media experience.

The first workshop in the series focuses on user-generated ephemera, in particular the proliferation of online video. The emerging digital media environment has created new opportunities for user-generated content to achieve broad distribution and so create a public of users. This has been typified, and enabled, by recent phenomena such as YouTube. The fleeting and competing nature of user-generated content has placed particular emphasis on the role of media performance - what can be understood broadly as a display of communicative competence for assessment by an audience. The workshop will examine the status and significance of user-generated ephemera (in particular online video) and the kinds of performance inscribed herein.

Questions under discussion might include: How is performance framed in user-generated ephemera? How is user-generated ephemera assessed and discussed by audiences? How does the temporality of circulation on the Internet shape the kind of publics that are convened around user-generated ephemera? How do ephemeral media performances represent national, regional, ethnic identity? How are questions of authorship understood in forms that frequently involve the reworking of existing material? What role do “gatekeepers” play in filtering the user-generated performances that are distributed to online audiences?

The workshop is interested in, but not limited to, the following media forms and issues:

* Production and genre – creative amateur practices, technologies, genres involved in making online video; the relation between amateur and professional media production
* Performance and address – styles of online acting, dance, musical performance; projections of gesture and voice within online video and other user-generated ephemera (e.g. webcams, online pornography, blogging)
* Sensory communication – the use of sound and image: audiovisual methods and strategies
* media environments - the relation of user-generated ephemera to continuities/changes in the media landscape; historical precursors to online video and user-generated ephemera
* Audiences – online communities and the construction of user hierarchies; questions of authorship and negotiation in “bottom up” forms of ephemeral media; dynamics of cultural borrowing and authorship in online remakes, mashups, and machinima
* Distribution and Intellectual Property - the role of gate keepers and cultural intermediaries; questions of censorship, policy and legislation relating to ephemeral media production, distribution and consumption
* critical methodologies – the means and possibilities of studying user-generated ephemera


The ephemeral media workshop is part of the AHRC’s ‘Beyond Text’ research programme and is designed to facilitate discussion in a small group environment. It can provide travel (up to £100), accommodation, and subsistence costs to all accepted participants. To apply for the workshop, please send a 250 word paper proposal and a short biography highlighting relevant research interests or publications to generalenquiries@ephemeralmedia.co.uk by 10th December 2008.

Music and Machines IX: Resistant Material (Upcoming conference, Newcastle)

MUSIC AND MACHINES IX: RESISTANT MATERIAL

NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

15 -1 6 JANUARY 2009

The "International Centre for Music Studies" (ICMuS) and "Culture Lab" at Newcastle University announce a two-day symposium on resistant materials in musical creativity as part of the "Music and Machines" research series.

Musical practices encounter many sites of resistance/resistivity
- the engagement with or overcoming of physiological restrictions
- the technological limitations of instruments, voices, computer systems, and other performance media
- constraints imposed by musico-theoretical systems such as "common practice" tonality and other formalistic issues
- the unpredictability and/or ambiguity of some of the newer creative tools such as interactive software, circuit-bending or distributed performance systems
- the critical dissonances that must be negotiated in much interdisciplinary collaboration

Developing out of a series of research events that began in 2004, "Music and Machines IX: Resistant Material" pulls together some of the different ways that contemporary musicians and theorists have thematized or had to work through the issue of resistant materials.
As well as core members of the CETL-funded ICMuS research grouping in Postvernacular Music, the symposium will include guest presenters from Glasgow Caledonian University, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, University of East Anglia, Edinburgh University, Culture Lab
Newcastle, and the Psychology and Philosophy departments at Newcastle University.

Sessions will take the form of short presentations by invited presenters, followed by round table discussions, with members of "the audience" actively encouraged to become involved. Session
presentations will include position statements, project reports, theoretical perspectives, and live performances. There are also live concerts each evening held in Culture Lab.

Participants will include
Paul Bell (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
David Clarke (ICMuS)
John Ferguson (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
Bennett Hogg (ICMuS)
Lars Iyer (Philosophy, Newcastle)
Raymond MacDonald (Psychology, Glasgow)
Peter Nelson (Music, Edinburgh University)
Sally Jane Norman (Culture Lab, Newcastle)
Joel Ryan (Royal Conservatory in The Hague)
Simon Waters (UEA)
Nick Williams (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
Graeme Wilson (Psychology, Newcastle)

Topics covered will include turntablism in free improvisation, learning Indian Classical Music, ambiguity and indeterminacy in bent circuits, modelling resistivity in virtual environments, formalism and subjectivity, the instrument in free improvisation, philosophical and cultural-theoretical perspectives on ideas of resistance in musical materials, and issues raised by the development of interfaces between musical performers and digital technologies.

A conference fee of £10 to cover coffee and tea is payable to Culture Lab, Newcastle. For registration please contact Carine Aguet at carine.aguet@ncl.ac.uk

For further information please contact Dr. Bennett Hogg at bennett.hogg@ncl.ac.uk

Details of registration procedures and a more detailed outline of the event will be posted on the "Culture Lab, Newcastle" website in due course. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab

CFP: Queer Screen Cultures (Study Day, Nottingham)

QUEER SCREEN CULTURES POSTGRADUATE STUDY DAY
UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
TUESDAY 5 MAY 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

Queer Screen Cultures is an interdisciplinary postgraduate study day to be held at the University of Nottingham on May 5th 2009 in association with the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network. It is devised with the aim of bringing together researchers from across the UK who deal with issues of queer visibility and representation, and so making links across the disciplines and across the academic spectrum.

There has been a perceptible alteration in media representations of queer sexualities since the 1990s, on a global scale. The cultural visibility of queers has increased exponentially, with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters now routinely populating film, television and other digital media, and the mainstream press frequently covering gay and lesbian stories as a matter of course. This interdisciplinary event seeks to explore representations and negotiations of queerness in contemporary screen cultures, as well as their determinants, in addition to interrogating recent queer readings and "reclamations" of earlier screen texts. Supporting scholars from film and media studies, sociology, politics and cultural studies among other disciplines, the event will cover a number of themes and issues pertaining to on screen queer visibility, including but not limited to:

- Cultural mainstreaming and the political contexts of queer visibility;
- Film-making and queer aesthetics;
- Queer audiences and participatory cultures: for example, L Word theme parties;
- On-screen intersections of queerness and other identities: gender, ethnicity, etc;
- Queer "reclamations" of ostensibly non-queer films, television programmes, and other texts;
- "Textual poaching," queer appropriations and slash fictions;
- Queer adaptations;
- Trans and genderqueer visibility: representations and marginalisation;
- National and regional queer identities in cinema and media;
- The impact of digitisation and the multi-platform environment on queer visibility;
- Network branding and queer narrowcasting, as in the here! and Logo channels;
- Internet technologies and queer self-fashioning: YouTube and other online broadcasting.

Gary Needham of Nottingham Trent University, author of the forthcoming Queer TV, and Dr Michele Aaron of the University of Birmingham, editor of New Queer Cinema, will be delivering plenary lectures. There will also be a roundtable discussion which will bring together both speakers and delegates to debate 'the cultural mainstreaming of queerness.'

We invite proposals for 20 minute papers from postgraduate research students on any aspect of contemporary queer screen culture. Abstracts of between 200-250 words and any other enquiries should be directed to Natalie Edwards at aaxne@nottingham.ac.uk

EXTENDED Deadline for abstracts is 1 December 2008

CFP: IAMHIST-Social Fears and Moral Panics (Aberystwyth)

IAMHIST 2009: SOCIAL FEARS AND MORAL PANICS
ABERYSTWYTH
8 - 11 JULY 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

The International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) announces a second call for papers for the XXIII biennial IAMHIST conference, incorporating the 3rd Gregynog Media History Conference, on the theme Social Fears and Moral Panics.

The aim of the conference is to explore both the role of the media in addressing, highlighting or perpetuating social fears, and the mass media itself as a perceived moral agent and/or threat. Topics to address might thus include questions of media content and/or language; concerns about public intrusion; censorship and the freedom of information; the reporting of crimes or disasters; invasion and security fears in times of peace or war; religious, cultural and/or linguistic fears; fears relating to youth or children, or to minority groups; fears relating to particular behaviours, pursuits or leisure activities; ‘golden ageism’.

Confirmed speakers include Chas Crichter, Julian Petley, Martin Barker, Steve Chibnell, Virginia Berridge, Aled Jones, Jason McElligott, and Sir Quentin Thomas (President, British Board of Film Classification)

We welcome paper proposals that address the theme in both contemporary and/or historical perspective; proposals which engage with the theme comparatively (both geographically and temporally); and proposals which engage with theoretical approaches, including the social theory of moral panic.

We also welcome proposals on their work in progress from postgraduate and early-career scholars in the field of media history, including on topics that may not be on the conference theme.

Proposals for complete panels (three themed papers) are welcome, as well as individual paper submissions. Papers presented at the conference should be 25-30 minutes in length and should use illustrative material (for instance film clips) wherever possible.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words per paper should be sent to Dr Sian Nicholas at iamhist2009@aber.ac.uk c/o Department of History and Welsh History, Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3DY, Wales UK, by 14 November 2008.

The conference is being organised by IAMHIST, in association with the Centre for Media History and Departments of History and Welsh History, and Theatre, Film and Television, Aberystwyth University, the Department of Media and Communications, Swansea University, and the journals Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and Media History, with the support of the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

For further details and updates, see
http://www.aber.ac.uk/history/research/centreformediahistoryIAMHIST2009.html

CFP: Richard Hoggart: Culture and Critique (Leeds)

RICHARD HOGGART: CULTURE AND CRIQITUE
An international conference hosted by
THE SCHOOL OF CULTURAL STUDIES AND THE INSTITUTE OF NORTHERN STUDIES
LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
10 - 12 JULY 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

Since the publication of The Uses of Literacy in 1957, Richard Hoggart has been one of Britain’s foremost public intellectuals and cultural critics. His work challenges entrenched disciplinary and social boundaries, addressing a wide range of subjects including literature, popular culture and the development of public policy.

His reputation for being both a critical and practical intellectual is evident in the way that he worked tirelessly within and without the world of academe for much of his career, working as an extra-mural lecturer at the University of Hull, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester, Professor of English and founding Director for the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and Warden of Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has also been a key member of numerous other public bodies and committees, including the Albermarle Committee on Youth Services, the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education and the
Broadcasting Research Unit.

During this time he has published over thirty books and contributed to numerous policy documents, the sum of which represents an extensive and entirely consistent engagement with normative questions and public discourses that continue to inform contemporary debates about culture, literacy, educated citizenship and social democracy.

Invited keynote speakers include Alan Bennett, Melvyn Bragg, Tony Harrison, Peter Bailey, Ros Brunt, Sue Owen, Jim McGuighan, Mac Daly, Jeremy Seabrook, John Corner, among others. Papers are invited on any aspect of the work or influence of Richard Hoggart, but are particularly encouraged on the following themes:

• Cultural Studies: Then & Now
• Uses of Literature
• Cultural & Social History
• Adult Education
• Media, Culture & Society
• Cultural Policy
• Gender, Sexuality & Race

Conference papers will be organized into panel sessions of 90 minutes, each comprising three 20-minute papers and time for discussion. Proposals may be submitted either for individual papers or for organized panel sessions of three papers and a chair.

Abstracts of papers (200 words) should be sent by 31st January 2009 to Pat Cook/Jean Brownridge. Email: Cook.Brownridge@leedsmet.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 113 812 3120

Further details will be posted on the School of Cultural Studies website in due course: http://leedsmet.ac.uk/as/cs/

Beyond the Screen: Transformations of Literary Structures, Interfaces and Genres (Upcoming Conf)

BEYOND THE SCREEN: TRANSFORMATIONS OF LITERARY STRUCTURES, INTERFACES, AND GENRES
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
CULTURAL STUDIES RESEARCH CENTER "MEDIA UPHEAVALS"
UNIVERSITY OF SIEGEN, GERMANY
20 - 21 NOVEMBER 2008

PANELS: Performance and the Emergence of Meaning :: Literature between Virtual, Physical, and Symbolic Space :: Beyond Genre: Transformations of Narrative, Poetic, and Dramatic Structures :: Preservation, Archiving and Editing.

Using electronic and networked media has resulted in such serious changes in the relationship between “author”, “work,” and “reader” that it seems necessary to make revisions in the traditional models analyzing literary communication. The Siegen conference on The Aesthetics of Net Literature: Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media (Nov 25-27, 2004) had already made clear that this triad has to be extended into the technical aspects of media: Literary processes emerge from techno-social networks, i.e. they materialize in the interplay between human and electronic “actants.” If in the past discussions centered mostly on those projects that were perceived by looking at the computer screen or that were controlled via keyboard and mouse, now man-machine interactions are organized by considerably more complex interfaces. The specific attention of this follow-up conference therefore will be focusing on the aesthetic processes of AI-controlled environments that occur in the physical realm between the interfaces of technical sensors or effectors and the human body. Electronic media take “body language” to a new level as well since more and more the whole body is involved in the media activity. Increasingly complex sensors (integrated into vehicles, clothes and environments) “realize”—hear, see, feel, in other words: measure—the movements of the body, its mimics and gestures. This “multimodal” body itself then also exchanges in-formation with the “products” of this kind of technology. Such medial couplings and framings enable the co-operation of non-symbolic activities, symbolic language activities and algorithmic processes of computer systems. If it is true that semantics is always the result of intermedial transcriptions between media then this development affects all human behavior concerning linguistic signs and therefore also the aesthetic processes of perception and self-perception. In this context the contributions to this conference will refer to literary communication and strategies thereby interrogating how literary structures, interfaces and genres change regarding:

Locative Narratives, i.e. environmental, neighborhood and city projects with GPS-based media following literary patterns (e.g. travel- and adventure-narratives or detective stories like J.-P. Balpe’s Fictions d’Issy; S. Schemat’s Augmented Real-ity Fictions; Inter Urban by 34 North 118 West or S. Berkenheger/G. Müller’s Worldwatchers).

Immersive Environments (Cave or interactive camera-projection systems) in which reception does not only take place through the eyes alone but rather in which the whole body is “reading” and thereby recomposing already saved meanings or those that still have to be constructed (e.g. N. Wardrip-Fruin’s Screen; J. Cayley’s Lens; C. Utterback’s Text Rain or D.Small/T. White’s Stream of Consciousness).

Stagings of inner realms and environments in which real characters (from simple users to trained actors) and artificial ones (from avatars, software agents etc. to complex AI-programs) following quite classical dramatic patterns of activity are involved in dialogues (e.g. M. Mateas/A. Stern et.al.: AR Façade).

Regarding the aesthetics of net literature therefore the question has to be asked whether we can continue talking of a specific migration of traditional literary forms into computer-based and networked media. Can we continue analyzing such examples as “literature”? In what way can the semantics of literary terminology, concepts and systems be retained or does it have to be revised? Can we still correlate the examples mentioned above with the three traditional genres?

Apart from this the performative projects mentioned above intensify the already difficult problem of the documentation / archiving of as well as the access to processes of electronic literature. Lastly, the conference also will address the problem of archiving and editing the rather transitory electronic literature, thereby attempting to advance the co-operation of current and planned databases, archives and editions.

Conference information can be found at: http://www.litnet.uni-siegen.de/

CFP: Migrating Music: Media, Politics and Style (SOAS)

MIGRATING MUSIC: MUSIC, MEDIA, POLITICS AND STYLE
An international conference
SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
10 – 11 JULY 2009

Over the last twenty years or so there has been much interest in music and diaspora, that is in migrating music. No doubt this interest is historically grounded. Movement of peoples and their music across the world has been occurring to an unprecedented extent and in novel ways. Researchers in a variety of disciplines have then responded by studying musical flows and the formation of hybrid styles, but also the way in which apparently similar music can mean quite different things in different contexts. We might sum up the overarching framework as one in which researchers focus on the (largely benign) diversification and pluralisation of musical meaning and experience.

We do not seek to overturn this framework. Quite simply, it taps an important part of the reality of migrating music in the contemporary period. But we do want to bring up a number of problems and issues, and call on colleagues to think about what these might mean.

Media. Mediation has been crucial to the global movement of musics, from the hymnal to the Web 2.0. Diasporas take recordings with them when they move; broadcasters and record companies cater to them in new lands; ‘World Music’ was launched as a marketing and media category. What, then, is the impact of mediation on migrating music, and are diasporas and host communities mere recipients, or rather active shapers of their musical diets?

Politics. The orthodoxy of today is that musical migration is predominantly a Good Thing, and that hybridity always has a progressive dimension. By the same token authenticity has become a straw target. But can the authentic be a significant value for musical cultures as they are relocated around the world? And were early commentators entirely wrong to worry about ‘Americanisation’ or ‘Westernisation’? Indeed are there new models that take into account ‘Bollywoodisation’ and the effects of other international culture industries? Does a focus on hybridisation sometimes obscure larger relations of economic, cultural, and aesthetic domination?

Style. Hybridity is rarely used in verb form. But the processes of stylistic transformation wrought by musical migration are very much about action – making change across time, space, codes and cultures. What are these ‘trans’ processes? Do they always depend on mixing, or can new migrant styles emerge from endogenous reference back to home styles? And how far are music makers and audiences consciously pushing to create the new?

We invite proposals for papers which address these and related questions from across the disciplines: (ethno)musicology, cultural and media studies, sociology, anthropology, history and performance studies. The conference emerges from the AHRC research project based at the Open University, Tuning In: Diasporic Contact Zones @ BBC World Service. So contributions which concern international broadcasting and/or the BBC are particularly welcome. We are also keen to receive proposals from practitioners – music makers, journalists and broadcasters.

Proposals for 20 minute papers should be between 150 and 200 words in length. Themed panels are welcome too. For panel proposals please submit 3 paper abstracts together with a panel title, a 50 word panel rationale, and the name of your panel convenor/chair.

Please send to Karen Ho at K.D.Ho@open.ac.uk. Closing date for submission is 22^nd February, 2009.

Keynote speakers:

Timothy Taylor – Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, UCLA
Sara Cohen – Reader in Music, Director of the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool
Charlie Gillett – Journalist and award winning presenter of ‘Charlie Gillett’s World of Music’, BBC World

Service in conversation with Kevin Robins

Martin Stokes – University Fellow in Music, St Johns College, Oxford University
Ruth Finnegan – Visiting Professor of Sociology, The Open University

Conference convenors are Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck, The Open University
Conference administrators are Karen Ho and Josine Opmeer, CRESC (Open and Manchester Universities)