Roskilde Conference CFP

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).

Please direct all inquiries to iaspmnorden@gmail.com.

Welcome to Roskilde in November 2012!

Fabian Holt, Associate Professor, Roskilde University

Antti-Ville Kärjä, IASPM-Norden Chair

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for the project Nordic Popular Music: Music, Identity, and Social Change in the Early 21st Century

The project is about contemporary popular music culture in the Nordic countries. The goal for the project is to produce an academic book, a series of radio and television shows, and exhibit artifacts and documents digitally.

The overall project directors are Antti-Ville Kärjä and Fabian Holt.

As of January 2012, the project partners are:

The National Broadcasting Corporation of Denmark
The Danish Museum of Rock History
The Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive
The International Assiociation for the Study of Popular Music, Nordic Branch

The project is supported by the Nordic Culture Fund.

More soon,
Antti-Ville Kärjä and Fabian Holt

Call for papers October 2011

CfC Popular Music in the Nordic Region

* PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY *

CALL FOR CHAPTER CONTRIBUTIONS

Popular Music in the Nordic Countries:
Music, Identity, and Social Change in the Early 21st Century

Editors:
Fabian Holt (University of Roskilde, fabianh@ruc.dk) and
Antti-Ville Kärjä (University of Turku, avkarj@utu.fi)

We are hereby making a call for chapter proposals for a volume with the title above. The volume will examine the role of popular music in the Nordic countries in the context of contemporary social change. The focus of volume will be to situate popular music in both local and cross-national contexts of the region and to apply and develop new interdisciplinary research perspectives. This call is therefore not only targeted at music studies but also at scholars working on music within anthropology, cultural studies, history, sociology, and media studies. The volume is part of a larger pan-Nordic collaboration and forms the basis for the production of radio and television series as well as museum exhibitions.

We encourage proposals on the following themes in particular, but emphasize that all suggestions focusing on the roles and limits of popular music in the Nordic countries from a 21st century perspective are welcome.

Popular Music in the Transformation of Welfare Society in Neoliberalism
Popular music has shaped conceptions of gender, ethnicity, and race in relation to ideologies of the welfare state. If we recognize popular music as an agent of both tradition and of social change, how is it shaping Nordic policies, subjectivities and ideas about cultural heritage in relation to recent neoliberal restructuring of the market–state relations?

Popular music and Changing Musical Geographies of Margins and Centers in the Nordic Region
Popular music has long been associated with urban centers and has thus created hierarchies between centers and peripheries. Is this changing with new technologies of distribution and ongoing urbanization? Moreover, are new geographies of the Nordic region emerging in contemporary popular music and how are they different from previous ones? Both border regions and indigenous peoples will be included in the analyses.

Popular Music in Emotional Culture and Narratives of Nordic Identity and Difference
Popular music is recognized for its role in public emotional culture, for example in relation to social hierarchies and ambient soundscapes associated with particular Nordic landscapes. In such cases, popular music affords a platform for emotional culture and diverse images of Nordic identity. Popular culture is also an arena for exoticization and stereotypes that have a bearing on social and societal power relations.

The proposals should not exceed 400 words and we ask they be submitted them as an email attachment in pdf format by 1 November 2011 to Fabian Holt at fabianh@ruc.dk. Please indicate ”Nordic Volume CfC” in the subject heading and label your attachment your_surname-nordpop.pdf. The editors will review the proposals and send notifications by 1 December 2011, after which appropriate contributors will be invited to a start-up symposium in Helsinki in February 2012 (subject to funding). The tentative deadline for first drafts of full manuscripts is in June 2013, with early 2014 as the expected publication date. Should you need further information or have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the editors.