Call for Proposals
IASPM Norden 2012 Conference
POPULAR MUSIC AND THE NORDIC REGION IN GLOBAL DYNAMICS
A conference to be held at the University of Roskilde in Denmark
November 29-30, 2012
Organized jointly by
--The Nordic branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM)
--"Popular Music in the Nordic Countries in the Early 21st Century," a cross-sector project funded by the Nordic Culture Fund
We are happy to invite proposals for entire sessions as well as for individual presentations for the 2012 IASPM-Norden conference. We welcome all topics related to the study of popular music, yet a specific emphasis in the conference is given to the politics of location of popular music in the Nordic countries.
The keynote presentations will be delivered by professor Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh) on the subject "What is different about popular music in the 21st century?", professor Jocelyne Guilbault (University of California, Berkeley; title TBA) and by professor Stan Hawkins (University of Oslo) on "Terror, Masculinity, and Music: Implications for the Nordic Identity".
Music is intimately tied together with conceptualisations of geographical locations and by extension identities. Differences may be thought of as existing between continents (eg. African, Latin, Western), regions (eg. Middle-Eastern, Balkan, Caribbean, Siberian) and especially nations (eg. all the world). Transnational populations and movements further complicate the issue: questions about Sámi or Kurd music imply their own politics of location, as do the ways in which regional, national or local identities are constructed musically in diasporic communities. To this quagmire one can add also the impact and significance of global mediated representations of given musical locales, regions and civilisations.
Nordic countries—Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—constitute their own region that is officially maintained through various treaties and organisations. In terms of international politics, the region has been characterised as a buffer zone between the East and the West. Societally, the region has been unified by welfare policies, and culturally the Arctic proximity has yielded speculations of a distinct Nordic mentality and forms of communication. These extend also to music.
Thus, we welcome proposals for example but by no means exclusively on the following topics:
* popular music in the construction of national identity in the Nordic countries
* reception and conceptualisation of Nordic popular musics outside the region
* the transnational flows of popular music in the Nordic region
* indigenous popular music in the Nordic region
* mainstreams of Nordic popular music
* popular music and the linguistic diversity in the Nordic region
The official conference language is English.
The proposal should include the following:
Title(s), name(s) and affiliation(s).
Title of the presentation/session.
Abstract of the presentation/session (max 300 words) and five keywords.
Please deliver the proposals as electronic mail attachments in rtf/doc/pdf format to
iaspmnorden2012proposals@gmail.com no later than 1 June 2012. Please label your attachment as surname.xxx (eg. holt.doc).
Welcome to Roskilde in November 2012!
Fabian Holt, Associate Professor, Roskilde University
Antti-Ville Kärjä, IASPM-Norden Chair
