Call for Papers: Soundscapes of The South
Soundscapes of The South welcomes papers on southern music and its diverse contexts, themes, places, and moments for a Symposium taking place at the Museum at Capricorn in Macon, Georgia, on September 28-29, 2023
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Call for Papers: Soundscapes of The South
Macon, Georgia
September 28-29, 2023
“Precisely how and why the American South has shaped and nurtured so much successful art is something sociologists and anthropologists will still be bickering about a half century from now,” Amanda Petrusich wrote in It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music (2008): “All I know is that it is mostly true.” Fifteen years on, her musical travelogue remains a vital exploration of the ways in which place may influence “the sounds we make.”
Soundscapes of the South welcomes papers on southern music and its diverse contexts, themes, places, and moments for a Symposium taking place at the Museum at Capricorn (https://capricorn.mercer.edu/museum/) in Macon, Georgia, on September 28-29, 2023. Aiming to cover a plethora of artists, genres, periods, topics, expressions, and perspectives, we invite presentations that range from the analytical and the reflective to reminiscence and anecdote, by scholars, critics, journalists, authors, artists and musicians, on the theme of “Southern soundscapes.”
Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):
- Genres such as Bluegrass, Blues, Cajun, Zydeco, Jazz, Honky-Tonk, Rockabilly, Rock, Hip-Hop, Rap, Gospel, Sacred Harp, Folk, Country, Dance music, Tex-Mex/Música Tejana, R&B, Ragtime, Swamp Pop
- Specific artists and bands
- Case studies of albums and shows
- Maps and topographies
- Traditions, revisions, innovation
- Labels, recording studios, venues
- Landscape and the poetics of place
- Musical hotspots
- Race
- Gendered subjectivities
- Historical events and moments
- Protest music
- Music and the literary tradition
- Weather and climate
- Travel and mobility
- The relations between the regional, the national, and the global
- The dynamics of the rural and the (sub)urban
- Recurring tropes and metaphors
- Minstrelsy, Radio
Keynote speaker: Stephen Deusner
We welcome abstracts (max 250 words) to Asbjorn.Gronstad@uib.no and Oyvind.Vagnes@uib.no. Deadline: May 20th, 2023
