CFP: Popular Music Fandom: A One Day Symposium (University of Chester)

POPULAR MUSIC FANDOM: A ONE DAY SYMPOSIUM
UNIVERSITY OF CHESTER
NORTHWEST POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES NETWORK
25 JUNE 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS

Binks Building, University of Chester
Northwest Popular Music Studies Network

Keynote speaker: Matt Hills (author of ‘Fan Cultures’)

While a range of researchers in cultural studies - notably Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills and Cornell Sandvoss - have moved the discussion about media fandom forward, much less work has been done specifically on popular music fandom. We invite contributors from a wide range of disciplines to discuss topics associated with popular music fan culture at this free one-day study event in Chester. Themes for papers may include (but are not limited to):

• Defining fandom
• Stardom and celebrity, reading and textuality
• Fandom and the consumer marketplace
• Fans as musicians / musicians as fans
• Perceptions of the music industry
• Collecting and other fan practices
• Live music, local scenes and fandom
• Stereotyping, self-awareness and media representation
• Gender, age and disability
• Methodology and research practice
• Theorizing fandom: processes, practices, identities
• Issues of taste, social mobility and class
• Personal narratives and investments
• Case studies, ethnographies and histories
• Fandom, heritage and tourism
• Specific music genres: jazz fandom, metal, northern soul, electronic music
• Religion, modernity and the ‘cult’ analogy
• The fan community: insiders, outsiders and the ‘ordinary' audience
• Fan culture and the paradigm of performance
• The ‘pathological’ tradition: questions of typicality and obsession
• Issues of race and nationality
• Power, psychology and symbolic economy
• Online participatory cultures

Papers will be twenty minutes in length. Please send an abstract of up to 200 words along with your name, affiliation, paper title, postal and email address to: Dr Mark Duffett, m.duffett@chester.ac.uk (marking your email title ‘fan symposium’).

The deadline for abstracts is Monday May 10th 2010.

CFP : Special issue of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture

SPECIAL ISSUE OF DANCECULT: JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC CULTURE
TITLE: PRODUCING EDM
GUEST EDITOR: DR ELIOT BATES (UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK)
DEADLINE: 1 MAY 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS

The third issue of Dancecult, the open-access peer-reviewed journal on electronic dance music cultures, will focus on producers and the production of electronic dance music.

Producers and production is broadly conceived to include:
--The production/creation/composition of dance music in recording studios
--Visuals production (e.g. VJing, liquid lights)
--The development, use, and transformations of technologies, musical instruments, software, interfaces, and computer hardware related to dance music and visuals production
--Event production and organization

A constellation of theoretical questions motivate the production of the present volume:
What is production, and how does electronic dance music production relate to creative work and production in other musical styles and cultural contexts?
Revisiting Negus and DuGay's expression "cultures of production / production of culture," what exactly is produced in EDM production?
Also, what are the cultures of EDM production?
To what extent are emergent genres fruitfully analyzed as a product of changing sociotechnological systems?
How are different forms of virtuality (virtual communities, online distribution, social media) affecting the situatedness of production?

We encourage the submission of articles that deal with topics of production in geographically and/or generically diverse milieus. In addition to feature articles and interviews, we encourage submissions of shorter, deeply ethnographic works with a strong multimedia component to the From the Floor section. These could include, for example, a studio production ethnography, a study of the organization of a single event, or a focused analysis of an online community of EDM producers.

Besides this special issue, we also welcome submissions of articles related to any aspect of electronic dance music cultures.

About Dancecult:
Dancecult is a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal for the study of electronic dance music culture (EDMC). A platform for interdisciplinary scholarship on the shifting terrain of EDMCs worldwide, the journal houses research exploring the sites, technologies, sounds and cultures of electronic music in historical and contemporary perspectives. Playing host to studies of emergent forms of electronic music production, performance, distribution, and reception, as a portal for cutting-edge research on the relation between bodies, technologies, and cyberspace, as a medium through which the cultural politics of dance is critically investigated, and as a venue for innovative multimedia projects, Dancecult is the forum for research on EDMCs.

CFP: Kiss Me Again: Mapping the Life and Legacy of Arthur Russell (NYU)

KISS ME AGAIN: MAPPING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF ARTHUR RUSSELL
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NYC
10 OCTOBER 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

The composer and musician Arthur Russell lived and worked in New York between 1973 and 1992. During his time in the city he performed and recorded compositional music, pop music, disco, new wave, songs for the cello, and hip-hop-inflected electronic pop. As any listener of his music will know, he also liked to blur the boundaries of genre as he went about his work. Russell's open-mindedness and antipathy to being marketed contributed to his lack of recognition, and his music went relatively unheard outside of aficionado dance circles after his passing. But beginning with the simultaneous release of Calling Out of Context and The World of Arthur Russell in 2004, and culminating with the release of the documentary film Wild Combination in 2008, Russell's work has gained a new lease of life.

Acknowledging the newfound interest in Arthur Russell, New York University, the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at University of East London and Bloomfield College are organising an Arthur Russell conference that will take place at NYU on 10 October. The all-day event will be organised around four panels, two featuring invited speakers, two featuring speakers who respond to this call for papers. The conference will also feature a screening of Wild Combination, with director Matt Wolf answering questions, and (it is hoped) rare Arthur Russell footage shot by Phill Niblock and Alan Abrams. The evening event will feature musicians who worked with Arthur Russell. Tim Lawrence's biography of Arthur Russell, Hold On to Your Dreams, will be launched during the event. Attendance is free.

Suitable themes for papers include but are by no means restricted to Arthur Russell and his collaborators; Arthur Russell and the downtown scene; Arthur Russell and composition; Arthur Russell and genre; Arthur Russell, sexuality, race and sound; Arthur Russell and performance; and Arthur Russell and the contemporary music market. Papers might also consider specific recordings, including "Kiss Me Again" by Dinosaur, Arthur Russell's first record release, which came out on Sire Records in 1978. Papers should last for 20 minutes.

Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted to one of the organisers by 15 July. Decisions will be circulated by 31 July.

Organisers:
Sukhdev Sandhu (NYU): ss162 at nyu.edu
Tim Lawrence (UEL): tlawrence1 at mac.com
Peter Gordon (Bloomfield): petergordonmusic at mac.com