CFP: Music and Philosophy Study Group, AMS Pittsburgh 2013
Stephen Smith
CFP: Music, Sound, Affect
Recent years have witnessed what has been described as an “affective turn” in the humanities. Inspired especially by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and by various strains of psychology and psychoanalysis, scholars in a number of humanistic disciplines have elaborated a conception of affect as a field of intensities that are pre-personal, prior to or apart from meaning, extra-subjective, pre-linguistic, inhuman, and so on. This year’s meeting of the AMS Music and Philosophy Study Group seeks to offer a forum for critical reflection upon the significance of this affective turn for music studies. We invite contributions that consider avenues of research that are opened up by a concern with affect, as well as ways in which the affective turn allows us to reconceive old themes and problems. We also encourage submissions that explore the possible pitfalls and shortcomings that affect theory might present for music studies, or the special challenges that music and sound may present to this body of thought.
Possible topics and questions may include (but are by no means limited to) the following:
Historical conceptions of musical affect (especially the Affektenlehre) vis-à-vis contemporary affect theory
Affect and voice
Affect and sound studies
Social mediations of affect and sound (e.g. economic, cultural, intellectual)
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Affective labor
Affect and technology
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Music and the role of affect in politics
Sound, affect, and mass culture
Theorizing affect across sonic practices (music, film sound, sound art)
Sound’s relationship to emotion, meaning, and memory
Sound’s relationship to the unconscious, the irrational, and the erotic
Affective theology, spirituality, and religious thought
Affect and form or formal analysis
Our panel will feature papers of eight to ten minutes each; the session will be oriented towards discussion. Abstracts will be selected based upon the strength of the intellectual project they propose, as well as their clarity.
Please send a proposal of 250 words to the following email address: philoso...@gmail.com
The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2013.
If you have any questions about this event, please contact Stephen Decatur Smith, or contact any other member of the MPSG Organizing Board.
MPSG Chair:
Stephen Decatur Smith (Stony Brook University), stephen...@stonybrook.edu
MPSG Organizing Board:
Seth Brodsky (University of Chicago)
Amy Cimini (University of Pennsylvania)
Joanna Demers (University of Southern California) Michael Gallope (University of Chicago)
Brian Kane (Yale University)
Tamara Levitz (UCLA)
Jairo Moreno (University of Pennsylvania)
Holly Watkins (Eastman School of Music)
Stephen Decatur Smith