*Call for Participants: AMS/SMT Alternative-Format Joint Session on Hip-hop
StudiesIn the introduction to his 2004 book Making Beats:  The Art of
Sample Based Hip-Hop, Joseph Schloss notes the relative absence of music
studies:“It does no disservice to previous work to say that [hip-hop
studies] has tended to focus on certain areas (such as the influence of the
cultural logic of late capitalism on urban identities, the representation
of race in popular culture, etc.) to the exclusion of others (such as the
specific aesthetic goals that artists have articulated). Nor is it a
criticism to say that this is largely a result of its methodologies, which
have, for the most part, been drawn from literary analysis. We must simply
note that there are blank spaces and then set about to filling them
in.”While hip-hop studies has continued to grow into a formidable
interdisciplinary force covering a wide range of repertoire from multiple
disciplinary angles, the situation Schloss describes still persists 17
years later, and music studies remain relatively uncited in broader hip-hop
scholarship. Since the early contributions of Robert Walser (1995) and Adam
Krims (2000), a second generation of scholars have contributed to
discussions of hip-hop and race (Kajikawa 2015), religion (Miyakawa 2005),
flow (Adams 2009), postcolonialism (Rollefson 2017), and gender and
sexuality (Kehrer 2017). The purpose of this proposed alternative-format
session for the 2018 joint meeting of the American Musicological Society
and the Society for Music Theory is to present the plurality of current
research in music theory and musicology that engages with a range of
hip-hop topics, and additionally, to have a productive dialogue between
participants on our role within the wider area studies and how we can
better collaborate. If the proposal is accepted, participants would need
membership in either AMS or SMT at the time of joint meeting in San Antonio
in November of 2018. While we envision that the session will comprise of
multiple short (5-10 min) position papers or presentations of original
research that focus on methodological issues, we are very much open to
other ideas as well as variations in format. Please submit the following to
[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> by the deadline of 15
December:--100 word proposal.--AMS and/or SMT affiliation/intended
affiliation (and institutional affiliation, if any)--3-5 Keywords or
themes--(optional) any other ideas for alternative format Length of the
panel proposed will be dependent on the cohesion of papers and direction
that the session takes based on who applies. The aim in ‘crowdsourcing’ the
session in this way is to try and get a wide range of perspectives from a
diversity of backgrounds. Please note the session is subject to approval by
the AMS and SMT committees. We look forward to seeing you in San
Antonio.Sincerely,Lauron Kehrer and Mitchell Ohriner, conveners*


-- 
Justin A. Williams, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Music
Department of Music, University of Bristol
Victoria Rooms, Queens Road
Bristol BS8 1SA