SEM Sounding Board Call for Submissions: “Archives and the Sounds of Conflict”
Davindar Singh
The SEM Sounding Board, an annual curated collection of field recordings and sound pieces organized by the SEM Sound Studies Special Interest Group (soon-to-be Sound Studies Section, thanks to your support), warmly invites contributions for this year’s annual meeting. We also invite folks to join our editorial collective.
This year’s theme is “Archives and the Sounds of Conflict.” Even amidst quarantines and travel limitations, conflict of many kinds continues unabated. In the past six months, concerned individuals have breached COVID restrictions and police violence to join civil rights protests in many places. Yet the sounds of these gatherings may not circulate or be audible in quite the same ways that they would have been even six months ago. The question of how the sounds of dissent are being (and will be) archived is thus a pressing one.
This year’s call builds especially on prior extraordinary work in SEM and Sounding Board, including Ali Martin’s sonic examination of policing and sonic gentrification in Washington, D.C., and Winnie Lai’s sonic documentation of the recent Hong Kong protests.
As SEM is virtual this year, we have an extraordinary chance to host and display work from all over the world, and to instantiate a dialogue far beyond the boundaries of a typical conference event. We also stress that contributions need not be technologically whiz-bang, just critically interesting!
Our initial deadline for proposals is September 20. If you have a piece you’d like to submit, please email me and/or my co-chair, D.J. Hatfield (djhatf at gmail), with a 100-250 abstract that describes the intended project. Final submissions of audiovisual material will be due October 15. The editors are happy to work with you to fine-tune any parts of your project for which you would like a hand.
And if you’re interested in joining our editorial team, let us know!
Best wishes,
Davindar Singh
davindarsingh at g.harvard.edu