Music and Migration / CFP

Call for Papers

In recent cultural, sociological and historical research, the themes of migration, mobility and multi-location have provoked innovation and changes of perspective. This growing interest in topics related to “cultural mobility” (Greenblatt 2009) has encouraged the thesis of a “new mobility paradigm” (Sheller / Urry 2006). Resulting research has revealed the assumption that individuals are static and spatially fixed to be an exception rather than the rule, and relevant only in particular historical cases. This finding thus questions the structure and methods of many disciplines in the humanities, which largely assume that agents stay in one place.

As a result of its physical and cultural nature, music is usually considered mobile. In the historical context of colonisation, migration, multi-location and expulsion, musical activity can be considered as a central feature in the processes of cultural appropriation and conversion. Music often motivates individuals to migrate, either for reasons of work or as a result of persecution.

Earlier research tended to treat music as the object of spatially fixed narratives such as local, regional or national music historiography, philology or identity politics. A research agenda that takes the experience of migration seriously thus poses a significant challenge to the discipline of musicology.

The advisory board of the 2016 annual conference of the ÖGMW invites proposals for papers and poster presentations, which should explore the innovative research potential of research that focuses on the experience of migration or mobility. Individual case studies should deal with the possibility of such methodological innovation, and with the construction of a theory that is both timely and topical.

Proposals from all subdisciplines of musicology are warmly welcomed.

Abstracts for papers (up to 500 words) or poster presentations (up to 300 words) may be submitted by email to

oegmw2016@sbg.ac.at

until 22 February 2016.

The abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by a committee. You will receive notification of the outcome by 22 March 2016.