Music, Musicology and Academic Responsibilities in the 21st Century

Timetable (provisional)

Presentation Rooms: J305, J308 (Newman Building)
Registration, Coffee Breaks, Lunch: J307 (Newman Building)
All sessions labeled “a” take place in room J305, those labeled “b” in room J308.

Monday. 1 July

12:00 Registration opens

13:00-13:30 Welcome, Announcements

13:30-15:00
1a Artificial Intelligence and Posthumanism 
Randomness and Liveness: Revisiting Illiac Suite (1957) as AI Music Composition
Mui Kato (Goldsmiths, University of London)
“Harmonizing with Machines: Evaluating AI’s Role in Shaping Music Production, Perception, and Ethics”
Ching-nam Hippocrates Cheng (Indiana University Bloomington)
Towards a posthuman musicology?
Saskia Jaszoltowski (University of Graz)

1b Reflecting on Performance and Reception
Falling Apart – Chaotic Rhythms and States of Mind
Charles Macinnes (Hamburg)
Freeing Performance from the Spectacle: Moving from the Image of Performance to the Social Realities of Performing through a Critical Examination of Reception
Teerath Majumder (University of Chicago)
“Smash, Smash, Smash the Social Contract”: Revisiting Cornelius Cardew's People’s Liberation Music 
Akiva Zamcheck (Lafayette College)

15:00-15:30     Coffee Break

15:30-16:30
2a Panel: The Personal and the Political in 21st-Century Musicologies
Nineteenth-Century Irish America on Musicology’s Periphery
Sarah Gerk (Binghampton University)
Post-Imperial Musicology and the Zero-Sum Game
Imani Mosley (University of Florida)

2b Making a Living in Music in the 21st Century
Musicianship in the Digital Economy and its Strategic Implications for Modern-Day Music Profession in Nigeria
Rita Adaobi Sunday-Kanu (University of Port Harcourt)
How to Find Inspiration, Make a Difference, and Pay the Bills: A Professional Framework for Artistic Citizens
Jacob Thompson-Bell (University of Lincoln)

16:45-17:45 
Keynote 1 (Room J305)
Marcel Danesi (University of Toronto)
Instrumentalizing Music as Metaphor: The Synchronization of Music and Discourse at the Rallies of Dictators

17:45 Reception

Tuesday, 2 July

9:00 Registration opens

9:30-11:00
3a Performance and Scholarship
Responsible Authorship Practices and Authorship Criteria in 21st Century (Ethno-)musicology
Malik Sharif (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
Performing dandaro: where Performance and Ethnography meet
Bronwen Clacherty (University of Cape Town)
Bashayi Bengoma (‘Song beaters’) – Music, Collaboration and Scholarship in the Southern African State of Eswatini
Cara Stacey (University of the Witwatersrand)

3b Changing the World?
Music, Politics and the Post-Truth Crisis
Alexandra Monchick (Los Angeles)
Can Musicology Change the World? Conferences, Colonialism, and Love 
Hannah Willmann (University of Ottawa)
Fighting Polarisation Through Music?
Wolfgang Marx (University College Dublin)

11:00-11:30    Coffee Break

11:30-13:00
4a Panel: Whatever Works as Long as it’s Heavy? Metal as Opportunity for Musicology, Education and Methodology
Lions, Cheetahs, now Domestic Cats: Is “New Musicology” a sloppy generalization for today’s musical humanities?
Fulya Çelikel Soganci (Independent Scholar)
Mining the Anger – The (Metal Studies) Scholar’s Emotions as Methodological Challenge and Opportunity
Elena Bös (Munich)
The Learning: Metal Music Studies and a Broader Audience
Joe Diaz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

4b Musicology and Ecology
Posthumanism and Ecomusicology: Bridging the Polarisation of Nature in Contemporary Classical Music
Carol J Jones (University of Oxford)
Ornithological Music of Eastern N. America in the Age of Climate Change
Jacob Skiles (University of Georgia)
Acoustic Ecology and the Model of the Composer-Scholar-Activist
Mark Mahoney (Cornell University)

13:00-14:00    Lunch

14:00-16:00
5a Recalibrating Music in Academia
Knowing by Doing: Rebalancing Musicology and Practice for a Post-Disciplinary Age
Dillon Parmer (University of Ottawa)
Music Matters: Promoting Music During Times of Institutional Stress
Katherine Walker (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
Reclaiming Musicology as a Public Service: Obligations and opportunities
Peter Tregear (Melbourne University)
The Song Recital as Responsibility: “Global” Repertoire within the European Conservatoire
Natasha Loges (Hochschule für Musik Freiburg)

5b Caring about Performers and Scholars
Diversity and Inclusion in 1750s Dublin? The Case of Singer Rachel Baptist
Michael Lee
Still We Rise: Racial Discriminatory Resilience and Black American Musicians
Clarke Randolph (Howard University Washington D.C.)
Representation Matters: Who Gets to Publish in Music Theory Journals
Kimberly Goddart Loeffert (Virginia Tech), John Peterson (James Madison University)
For the Love of Music: Emotional Reproduction and the Neoliberalization of Community Outreach Programs in Pre-Professional Orchestras
Natalie Farrell (University of Chicago)

16:00-16:30    Coffee Break

16:30-17:30    
Keynote 2
Eva Moreda Rodriguez (University of Glasgow)
Musicology and “Practice” in the University: An Uneasy Marriage?

Ca. 19:00    Conference Dinner

Wednesday, 3 July

9:00 Registration opens

9:30-11:00
6a Panel: Work, Land, Space: on Being Accountable with Music
The Stars Down to Earth: Artist Legacies and the Value of Music in Satellite Radio Programming
Brian Fauteux (University of Alberta)
The Musical Work of Tidying Time
Fabio Morabito (University of Alberta)
Songs Held in Common: Music as Non-Extractive Resource
Patrick Nickleson (University of Alberta)

11:00-11:30    Coffee Break

11:30-13:00
7a Sources and Methods
The Challenge of Musicological Studies from the Newly Excavated Sources
Patrick Huang (University of Western Ontario)
EarlyMuse: Early Music Research In Europe
Rebekah Ahrendt (University of Utrecht)

7b Rethinking Concepts
How We Got Into Critique, And How To Get Out: On Loving “Art” Music in the Twenty-first Century
Naomi Graber (University of Georgia)
Placing Popular Music Studies in Current Discourses. A Musicological Perspective
Bernhard Steinbrecher (Innsbruck University)
Taking a Stance for the Masses – or the Ambivalent Positionalities of Researching the Mainstream in Popular Music
Helene Heuser (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)

13:00 Closing Remarks

Call for Papers

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2005 Harold Pinter said: “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false … I believe that these assertions still make sense ... [in] art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”

This dichotomy between the duties of artists (as well as humanities scholars) and of private citizens indicates why the arts and humanities find themselves at a crossroads today. The moral turn of the last decade, the increased focus on sustainability, equity, diversity and inclusion as underpinning all academic work regardless of the discipline, the increasing polarisation of our society, the relativisation of truth as represented by the post-truth mentality, and neoliberal pressures leave the arts and humanities between a rock and a hard place. Thus, we all must continuously explore realignments of our duties as academics and citizens. Like every generation before us, we have to find new ways to understand and answer the challenge posed by Karl Marx’s (slightly adjusted) eleventh Feuerbach thesis, that our work should not merely describe and interpret the musical world in various ways but also help change it.

This conference shall try to find common ground between representatives of the various music-related areas and different roles of this debate. Our aim is to provide a platform for productive discussions while exploring strategic options to address the disparate forces that threaten the foundations of both academic discourse and societal cohesion.

Our keynote speakers will be Eva Moreda Rodriguez (University of Glasgow) and Marcel Danesi (University of Toronto).

The following list suggests areas that proposals can engage with. However, it is by no means exhaustive – proposals covering other topics are welcome, too.

• Truth and relativism in music and musicology
• The impact of ethical considerations on methodologies and vice versa
• How our (digital) tools change the ways we think and operate
• Strengths and weaknesses of critical theory in the 21st century
• Polarisation in the musical humanities
• How objective can and should we be? Reason and emotion as subjects and objects of musicological scholarship
• Intersectionality in music and musicology – the conceptual and practical interaction of ethnic grouping, class, gender etc. in scholarship
• Re-balancing musicology and musical practice
• The role of aesthetics in a context-focused world
• Neoliberal concepts and practices in the musical humanities
• AI’s impact on production, reception, authenticity and ethics in music

This conference will take place in person without a hybrid option. Proposals are invited for individual papers or sessions of three papers. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words and be accompanied by a CV of no more than 150 words. In the case of a session proposal the abstracts should be accompanied by an introduction to the session topic of up to 250 words. Proposals should be submitted in a word-compatible format (no pdf!) by 1 December 2023 to the following email address: (opens in a new window)academic-responsibilities@ucd.ie. Notification of the selection results will be released by 26 January 2024.

Organising Committee

• Wolfgang Marx (University College Dublin)
• Alexandra Monchick (Los Angeles)
• Dillon Parmer (University of Ottawa)
• Peter Tregear (University of Melbourne)
• Helen Lawlor (Technological University Dublin)

Programme Committee

• Nicole Grimes (UC Irvine)
• Helen Lawlor (Technological University Dublin)
• Alexandra Monchick (Los Angeles)
• Dillon Parmer (University of Ottawa)
• Peter Tregear (University of Melbourne)