CFP: Festival of Faith and Music, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, Apr 2009

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Dec 2, 2008, 2:33:01 PM12/2/08

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Festival of Faith and Music, April 2-4, 2009
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI

Keynote Speaker: Cornel West

The Festival of Faith & Music is a biennial conference that brings together
musicians, journalists, academics, students and lovers of music and popular
culture to discuss diverse forms of popular music and issues of faith. We are
interested in discovering and celebrating popular music that can be understood
as rooted in conviction and/or engaged with themes of faith broadly conceived,
including justice, truth, hope, epiphany, transcendence, and redemption, and in
hearing or interpreting popular music from faith perspectives. Calvin College
is a Christian liberal arts college which seeks to study and engage popular
culture. Our festival is not primarily concerned with the Christian music
industry or limited to discussing only those artists who publicly embrace a
specific religion. Rather, we hope to facilitate a broader conversation about
all forms of popular music and our response to it as people of faith.

Past festivals have featured artists Emmylou Harris, Sufjan Stevens, Neko
Case, and David Bazan. For this year’s festival, we have invited The Hold
Steady, Over The Rhine, and T Bone Burnett, and we anticipate the inclusion of
many other artists. Our keynote speaker will be Cornel West, and other
confirmed speakers include Makoto Fujimura, Josh Jackson (creator of Paste
Magazine), Jessica Hopper, Terry Mattingly, Cathleen Falsani, and Andy Crouch.

We are seeking proposals for 20 minute (2,000-2,500 word) papers that address
issues of faith in popular music and its various social and cultural contexts.
We are particularly interested in papers related to our artists and speakers.
Updates on confirmed artists and speakers can be found on the festival website:
http://www.calvin.edu/admin/sao/festival/.

Please email a 300-word abstract (attached in Word format) to Drs. Benita
Wolters-Fredlund and Mary McCampbell at ffmcfp at gmail.com. Queries are also
welcome.