[CFP] Periods and Waves: A Conference on Sound and History

[Stephen Smith]

Dear Colleagues,

Please consider submitting to this fantastic event!  It will be held at Stony Brook University on April 15-16, 2016, and it will be organized by Erika Honisch and Benjamin Tausig.

All my best wishes!

Steve (CFP below)

PERIODS AND WAVES: A CONFERENCE ON SOUND AND HISTORY
http://you.stonybrook.edu/periodsandwaves/
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
April 29–30, 2016

Plenary Speakers:            

Emma Dillon (Professor of Music, King’s College London)
Stefan Helmreich (Professor of Anthropology, MIT)
Alexander Rehding (Professor of Music, Harvard University)
Emily Thompson (Professor of History, Princeton University)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Sound, like history, describes a dynamic terrain. Scholars concerned with the convergence of sound and history have, in the wake of the “sensory turn” in the humanities, worked to generate clear narratives from data that resists fixity, that seems to be in constant motion. The shared aims of sound studies and history have yielded a rich body of scholarship that interrogates, for example, the noisy illuminations of medieval songbooks, acoustic control in modern architecture, sound and the moving image, and accounts of deafness and synaesthesia. The practice of thinking sound historically and history sonically is driving the growth of fresh methodologies and compelling new interpretations of sources.

PERIODS AND WAVES: A CONFERENCE ON SOUND AND HISTORY is co-organized by the Department of Music, Department of Philosophy, and School of Health Technology & Management at Stony Brook University. We welcome submissions for 30-minute presentations that investigate past aural cultures from scholars in musicology, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, medical history, philosophy, religion, disability studies, and sound studies. 

Paper topics may include:

• sound studies methodologies
  
• theoretical and empirical limits of “sound studies”
  
• sonic geographies
  
• histories of sonic technology
  
• music as sound and/or sound as music
  
• past understanding of the meaning of sound
  
• sound and non-normative sensoria
  
• sound, power, and race
  
• digital sonic histories
  

More specific topics may include:

• aural cultures of wartime
  
• the acoustical life of musical venues
  
• sonic technology and conceptions of the human
  
• transduction
  
• bells
  
• the acousmatic
  
• Baroque acoustic effects
  
• sonic encounters in the New World
  
• sonic signification in the polytextual motet
  

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to Periods...@stonybrook.edu. The deadline for abstracts is December 31, 2015. In your email, attach a separate document stating your name, institutional affiliation and position, if any, and audiovisual requirements. Please direct questions to Erika Honisch (erika....@stonybrook.edu) or Benjamin Tausig (benjami...@stonybrook.edu).

--

Stephen Decatur Smith

Assistant Professor of Music History and Theory

Stony Brook University 

518.368.9708