Call for Papers
Identities - An interdisciplinary approach
23-25 October 2014, Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM), Istanbul
Technical University

Keynote Speaker
Professor Dinko Fabris, president of the International Musicological Society


Conference outline

MIAM, Centre for Advanced Studies in Music, of the Istanbul Technical
University will be hosting an international graduate students conference in
Istanbul, Turkey from 23 to 25 October 2014 under the auspices of the
International Musicological Society. The title of the conference will be
"Identities - An Interdisciplinary Approach" . The keynote speech will be
given by Professor Dinko Fabris, president of the International
Musicological Society.

CALL FOR PAPERS

For the last several decades, the ever-evolving concept of identity has
been a central issue for researchers from the many disciplines who examine
musical phenomena. Whereas we had once associated identity mainly with
religious, ethnic, or national groups, it has recently become a scholarly
commonplace that identity functions as a conceptual tool on many levels of
human experience, from the individual to the mass societies of
nation-states and everything in between. Taking as a starting point the
well-worn postulate that music can be a means to manifest identity,
construed broadly, we invite proposals that take this subject into fresh
territory from any of the music disciplines, including musicology,
ethnomusicology, historical musicology, systematic musicology, cognitive
musicology, empirical musicology, and music theory, as well as from
researchers in other fields for whom musical phenomena are a substantial
element (philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, critical theory,
gender studies, psychology, economics, and many others). We are
particularly interested in proposals that question some of the
long-standing assumptions and central texts in this line of research. For
example, while identities are often delineated in isolation or in
antagonistic opposition to other identities, perhaps several identity
groups existing in the same society could be considered in an agonistic
relationship. Similarly, one could call into question the hard boundaries
that the discourses of identity politics consistently claim as a rhetorical
strategy, but likely do not capture what are in reality more fluid and
unstable boundaries between cohering groups. We also welcome papers that
explore the epistemology and ontology of the concept of identity itself. In
the wake of advances in social and neurosciences since Benjamin’s “Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” or Bateson’s cybernetics of the
self, for example, we may freshly ask, What is a thing [i.e. the self, a
group, a music, the object, the process, relationship, etc.] with which one
identifies?

The following topics might be addressed, although they are by no means an
exhaustive list of the approaches to the intersection of music and identity:
- Identity during political change and its connection with music
-The role of musical identity in the everyday lives of people who are
dealing with rapid societal change
- Music as a manifestation of resistant worldviews of sub-cultures
-National identity and related musical expression
-Cultural identity of minority groups and subcultures within larger
societies
-The musical identities of diverse genres from art, commercial, popular,
and traditional musics
-The musical outcomes of reformations that have taken place within a
particular identity group, as well as the way music can contribute to these
reformations
- Music as construction of individual identity and the play between
individual and group identity enacted through musical experience
- The relationship of specific elements of a certain identity and musical
style
- Processes of identity creation and manifestation that occur through music
investigated as they might function at the level of the individual mind
(this could include psychological, cognitive, or micro-sociological
methodologies)

Please send your proposals for 20-minute papers to the following email
address:
*[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>*

Your proposals should include:
- name of participant(s) and institutional affiliation
- abstract (ca. 300 words, in doc. or docx. form)
- short CV (ca. 150 words)

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS
15 March 2014

PARTICIPATION FEE
There will be no fee to attend this conference but we are not in the
position to cover any expenses

OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
English and Turkish (with simultaneous translation)