**Apologies for cross posting**
*Dear all, this is a reminder that the call for papers for this symposium
closes on Friday:*
*Call for Papers (deadline 24 January 2020)*
*Symposium: Music Studies on a Damaged Planet: Sound Responses to
Environmental Breakdown*
Supported by the Institute of Musical Research (RHUL)
Senate House, London, 27th March 2020
If, as activist Greta Thunberg says, the only response to climate crisis is
to ‘act as if our house is on fire’, where does this leave music studies?
Music scholars, like the wider academy and society at large, have struggled
to respond to the climate emergency and environmental breakdown. And while
nature and the environment have been mounting thematic concerns in some
recent work, the scale and complexity of the current ecological crisis and
the urgent need for widespread systemic change raise questions about the
roles and responsibilities of music scholarship as a whole. If we must now
find ways to live on a damaged planet (Tsing, Swanson, Gan and Bubandt 2017),
environmental breakdown is no longer simply a topic with which some music
scholars choose to engage; rather, it is one of the conditions in which
music studies operates.
This one-day symposium asks how music studies should respond to the global
ecological crisis. We aim to consider this question across all dimensions
of our work – from our objects of study, through methods, to research
dissemination, teaching curricula and public engagement – while at the same
time interrogating the institutionalisation of music studies itself. Most
fundamentally, the conference asks questions about the purpose and politics
of academic work. Should critique remain the central academic response to
environmental breakdown? What is the role of practice-based research such
as composition and performance? How might we address the problem of
academic flying and other environmental impacts of knowledge
production? How might musicological practice engage effectively with
communities most at risk from environmental breakdown? How should we teach
music in this time of crisis? As activist movements grow around the world,
when and how should academic work become activist work? And looking beyond
familiar tropes of critique, advocacy and activism: are there other modes
of academic work that might offer more reparative, strategic, or radical
forms of response?
The symposium seeks to cultivate a forum in which the ramifications of
environmental breakdown for music studies can be properly felt and debated.
Doing so is necessarily a speculative, experimental proposition. It means
recognising that the ecological crisis intersects with multiple other major
social and political issues, including social justice, migration and late
capitalism. And it means exploring the personal dimensions of scholarly
work, acknowledging that academics are also kin, community members,
concerned citizens, and more. ‘Staying with the trouble’ (Haraway
2016) undoubtedly
entails difficult affects – despair, anxiety, grief, and the witnessing of
damage – but it might also enable a renewal of the scholarly impulse,
through new forms of pedagogy, play, storytelling, resource development,
scholarly collaboration and collective action. The symposium invites
contributions in this spirit of simultaneous concern and commitment.
The symposium will feature six *keynote panellists* from across academia,
activism and industry: Chiara Badiali (Julie’s Bicycle), Chris Garrard
(Composer/Co-director,
Culture Unstained), Angela Impey (SOAS, University of London), Blythe
Pepino (Mesadorm/Founder, Birth Strike For Future), Tina K. Ramnarine
(Royal Holloway, University of London), and George Revill (Open University).
We invite proposals for symposium contributions that *directly address the
question of scholarly responses to the ecological crisis*. In addition to
standard 20-minute paper submissions, we encourage proposals in alternative
formats, such as short workshops, facilitated discussions, mini-papers and
roundtable contributions on relevant topics.
Please submit abstracts (maximum 200 words) and a short rationale for any
non-standard formats by midnight on 24th January 2020 to
[log in to unmask]
Some travel bursaries will be available to assist with the cost of
attending the symposium. If you wish to be considered for a bursary, please
include a short explanation of circumstances in your submission.
We encourage participants not to fly for the sole purpose of attending the
symposium. Virtual presentation options will be made available where
possible.
Symposium organisers: Joseph Browning (University of Oxford) and Andrew
Green (University of Glasgow)
########################################################################
To unsubscribe from the EUROMUSICOLOGY list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=EUROMUSICOLOGY&A=1
|