Popular Music and National Identities
Faculty of Arts, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
CALL FOR PAPERS - Day-Conference Monday 11 September 2000
More details: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sml/POPMUSIC/singing.html

On Monday 11 September 2000, the School of Modern Languages and the
Music Department of the University of Newcastle will be hosting an
interdisciplinary conference on popular music and national identity.
This conference is planned as the first in a series as part of the
Popular Music Research Project at Newcastle. The conference will
examine Francophone, Hispanic and Lusophone and Germanophone music and
song in their social, musical and political contexts.

The aim of this first day-conference is to bring together scholars
working in the field of popular music and national identity to open up
comparative areas of discussion and debate. Proposals for 20-minute
papers, including an abstract of 250 words, should be submitted by 1
May 2000. A selection of papers will be submitted for publication to
key Cultural Studies journals. Papers should be in English.

The issue of national identity is of particular relevance at the turn
of the century as postmodern theorizing engages with the simultaneous
yet seemingly paradoxical processes of cultural homogenization and
cultural heterogenization that characterize interactions in
transnational global markets. Popular music is perhaps the cultural
product which most easily crosses national boundaries whilst
perversely defining the local space. It is a marker of collective
identity in that it is a cultural activity through which social groups
come to know themselves as groups. However, listening and performing
music as experiential processes are inextricably bound up with
subjective, individual responses that may not correspond to social
categories such as class, race and gender. The dialectic between
personal response and the material conditions of production and
consumption of popular music make this a particularly rich field for
the exploration of the construction of social identities and cultural
narratives.

It is hoped that papers will engage with issues of popular culture and
power such as the politics of cultural nationalism, Gramsci's concept
of the national popular, government broadcasting policies, censorship
of popular forms, popular music and political resistance; tensions
between the global and the local in transnational markets, questions
of authenticity, and the cultural practices of diaspora and border
crossing.

The Conference organisers are:
Dr Ian Biddle (Musicology): [log in to unmask]
Dr. Hugh Dauncey (Francophone): [log in to unmask]
Dr. Vanessa Knights (Hispanic / Lusophone): [log in to unmask]
Professor Colin Riordan (Germanic): [log in to unmask]

One or more of us will be away from Newcastle during March and April,
so to guarantee a prompt response, please email proposals and queries
to ALL the organisers:
[log in to unmask],[log in to unmask],[log in to unmask],c.b
[log in to unmask] , or send us mail (marked 'Popular Music
Conference') to SML, Old Library Building, University of Newcastle
upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, or FAX us on 0191-222-5442.
Dr. Vanessa Knights
Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
University of Newcastle
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
NE1 7RU
+ 0191 2227480/2602073
fax: + 0191 2225442


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