Announcing CFP for Geographies of Auto-Tune: Pitch Correction and Vocal Practices in Global Contexts

Dear colleagues,

Catherine Provenzano and myself (Amy Skjerseth) are inviting abstracts for consideration in a volume prospectively titled Geographies of Auto-Tune: Pitch Correction and Vocal Practices in Global Contexts. The volume will have 10–15 essays of between 5,000–8,000 words, including references. We hope to field pieces that engage and emerge from a broad range of geographies, academic ranks (and artists/practitioners), and identities. Please see the précis below for more details about the volume. 

Below is our working timeline for the project: 

• Abstracts (300-500 words) and bios (100 words) due September 2, 2025 for consideration in a proposal we will send to University of Chicago Press
• Full essays due March 15, 2026

If you would like to discuss your contribution in more detail, please do not hesitate to contact me (askjerse@ucr.edu) or Catherine (cprovenzano@schoolofmusic.ucla.edu). 

Thank you so much, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly,

Amy and Catherine

Collection Précis:

Few if any technologies in the twenty-first century have so profoundly impacted the production of popular musics across the globe as Auto-Tune. Over the last nearly thirty years, from the most humble bedroom setups to the most outfitted Bollywood soundstages, digital pitch correction technologies have become part of everyday production practice and are taken for granted as a strategy of vocal mediation. Pitch correction practices have quickly eclipsed binary decisions to use or not to use the plug-in: the software not only entails pitch correction, but also a choice of vocal styling, which has shifted the myriad decisions artists, producers, and engineers have long made in creating recorded versions of the voice. Artists and engineers often negotiate the hyper-intimate relation of a singing body to itself, with an ear to regional, national, and even global sets of standards around timbre, pitch, and style. Auto-Tune and related technologies have also inspired impassioned debate, and shifts in the conceptual and symbolic work of vocalists across genres and global spheres of production. As technologies that are bound up with the politics of identity as much as the politics of labor, pitch correction software and the practices that arise alongside them necessarily articulate with historical lineages of local musical practice and imaginaries of audience in a globalized musical marketplace.

Much of the popular music and media studies work that attends to pitch correction as a phenomenon is necessarily bound to its own–often local, or predominantly Western–context. This book assembles interdisciplinary scholars to study Auto-Tune, as well as the numerous software plug-ins (like Melodyne, Waves, KeroVee) that do similar work, across an array of geographical, medial, and musical contexts. We ask: why is Auto-Tune often understood as a contemporary phenomenon rather than a device that unearths entanglements of artists’ voices with the histories and practices of spaces, places, and times? How does Auto-Tune interface with musical traditions that far outdate it? In which genres has Auto-Tune become a stylistic signifier–for example, Algerian raï or Puerto Rican reggaeton–and elicited extensive debates about who belongs in that genre and accepted modes of expression? How can global perspectives help us to better understand Auto-Tune’s use not only as a technology, but also an affective and political tool?

Auto-Tune may be ubiquitous, but its uses and critiques are not universal–rather, they expose differences in power, access, tradition, and more. As Auto-Tune has shifted the landscape of music production, it also has changed the face of media production, including apps like I Am T-Pain, reality TV shows, and more. By spotlighting this pervasive technology, we will join several conversations in popular music and media studies, spanning industrial, economic, cultural, and historical concerns. This volume intends to show how Auto-Tune–from mumblecore to Morocco, myths to memes–has had ubiquitous sounds and presence, but also varied practices, which must be placed in global contexts.

Dr. Amy Skjerseth (she/her)

Assistant Professor of Popular Music

University of California, Riverside

Clouds, Streams, and Ground (Truths): Developing Methods for Studying Algorithmic Music Ecosystems

Call for Proposals 

We are pleased to announce a Call For Papers for the conference, "Clouds, Streams, and Ground (Truths): Developing Methods for Studying Algorithmic Music Ecosystems," to be held at the University of California, Berkeley, March 7-8, 2026. 

"Fail fast, fail forward" echoes throughout Silicon Valley. The phrase validates (and often financially rewards) companies who pursue rapid technological development over more considered approaches. But this future-oriented vision has also made these systems difficult to study: like the metaphorical "stream," they are constantly in flux. One consequence: digital music, streaming platforms, and cloud infrastructures have been around for decades, yet scholars lack a consensus on how to study these objects. Access to the past is often foreclosed by relentless pursuits of digital futures. 

Our aim is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers in the music industry, and legal practitioners to discuss the challenges of studying these digital systems and develop ways to make them more knowable. We are soliciting proposals for presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion) from scholars in musicology, critical data studies, media studies, and related disciplines to contribute their perspective to the conversation. Possible topics of interest include: 

• How does metaphorical language like clouds and streams shape how we perceive the affordances of different music technologies? 

• What kind of knowledge can we generate about these systems taking a historical approach? An ethnographic one? 

• Quantitative vs. qualitative: What can we learn about these systems by studying them at scale, and what can we learn from case studies? 

• What are the implications of a rapidly changing political economy of music? Have we seen comparable economic shifts in the past? 

• What can recent (or not so recent) litigation reveal about these companies or their technologies?  

• What kind of musical data is publicly available, and what can we do with it? 

• Most commercial music recommendation companies were developed in North American and European contexts. These systems were largely trained on popular music, but with an eye to universal applications. How might we go about mitigating bias from this training data? Is taking a universal approach to music recommendation and generation even possible? 

The conference will feature keynotes by Bob Sturm (KTH Royal Technical University), Anna Huang (MIT), and Chris White (UMass, Amherst), along with roundtables with researchers in the music industry and the legal sphere. We anticipate having financial support available to help defray the costs of travel/lodging for accepted participants, particularly graduate students or independent scholars. 

If interested, please send proposals of 250 words to conference@algorithmicmusicmethods.com by August 22, 11:59PM. 

Program decisions will be announced no later than September 19. 

Organizing committee: Allison Jerzak (UC Berkeley), Ravi Krishnaswami (Brown University) 

​​https://www.algorithmicmusicmethods.com/ 

Call for Proposals

IASPM-US 2026

Music and the State

As the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are living in an opportune moment to contemplate relationships between music and the state.How, for example, has popular music reinforced or challenged state power? How has the state, a complex and multifaceted entity, interacted with popular music artists, audiences, and industries? How have government agencies and institutions promoted, preserved, or censored musical expression? How have communities and private citizens engaged with state structures, policies, and institutions through popular music?

With such questions in mind, the U.S. branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) is pleased to announce that its next annual conference will be held in Washington, D.C., at George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, February 26-March 1, 2026.

We invite abstracts for individual papers, organized panels, roundtable discussions, workshops, and alternative (non-paper) presentations on all aspects of popular music, broadly defined, from any discipline or profession. We especially welcome proposals that highlight the significance of Washington, D.C., as a political capital and cultural hub, and its institutions documenting, preserving, and promoting the musical heritage of the United States (e.g., the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, etc.).

Other possible topics include:

●      Music and public policy

●      Music and diplomacy

●      Music and protest

●      Music and civil rights

●      Music and nationalism

●      Music and public education

●      Music and public institutions

●      Music and propaganda

●      Music and revolutions

●      Music and law

●      Music and the military

●      Music and state borders

●      Music and exile

●      Music and state archives

●      Music in political capitals other than Washington, D.C.

Proposals on other topics advancing the study of popular music outside the conference theme are also welcome.

In addition to a full schedule of paper presentations, the meeting will also feature keynote events, awards, special guests from Washington, D.C., and opportunities to visit national cultural institutions and museums.

About IASPM-US:

IASPM-US is a multidisciplinary organization that invites proposals from across all fields of scholarly inquiry. Conference proposals from intellectuals outside of academia, including K-12, museums and archive professionals, musicians and music professionals, and independent scholars, are encouraged. IASPM-US is also a friendly conference for students at all levels. We especially welcome proposals from members of underrepresented groups including, but not limited to women, Black/African American, Indigenous, and People of Color, disabled individuals, and people from LGBTQ+ communities, as well as people of different ages, socio/economic classes, nationalities, and religions.

Presentation Formats and Submission Instructions:

To facilitate networking among the membership, support local artists and venues, and take advantage of various activities and events programmed for the conference, IASPM-US 2026 is an in-person conference.

Please submit proposals via Google Forms using the link below no later than midnight (Eastern Standard Time) September 15, 2025. The form will collect information including the presenter(s) name, institutional affiliation (if any), current contact information, current membership status in IASPM, and a 100-word bio.

●      Individual paper submissions should include a paper title, a 250-word abstract, and a list of 3-5 keywords. Abstracts should state the paper’s goals, argument, and context; identify the methodology used; and use language accessible to a multidisciplinary audience.

●      Organized panels, consisting of 3-4 papers, should include in their submission a panel title, a 250-word description of the panel’s rationale and goals, a 250-word abstract for each individual participating in the panel, and a list of 3-5 keywords.

●      Roundtables, consisting of a moderated conversation with 4-6 participants, require a single 250-word abstract, a list of 3-5 keywords, a list of roundtable members and should designate one person as the panel chair.

●      Alternative presentations should include a 250-word description of the presentation, a list of 3-5 keywords, the delivery format, and special requirements beyond standard AV-equipment.

Individual presentations may last up to 20 minutes with a 10-minute question and answer period. Roundtables and organized panels can be allotted up to a two-hour time slot. Abstracts that exceed the 250-word limit will not be considered.

Link to proposal form: https://forms.gle/ByJ7wWtQZAaV9PuQ6

QR Code to proposal form:

  

Please note: All conference presenters must be IASPM members by the time they register for the conference. For membership and conference information visit:https://iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/

This year’s program committee consists of Andrés Amado (chair), Kevin Holt, Kim Kattari, Maureen Mahon, and David Suisman. You may direct questions to Andrés Amado at iaspmus.conference@gmail.com.

JPMS Call for Associate “Field Notes” Editor

The Journal of Popular Music Studies (JPMS) seeks a new associate editor to work on the “Field Notes” section of the journal. Field Notes is a non-peer-reviewed section comprising solicited and pitched essays that associate editors collaboratively curate and oversee. Pieces in this section take up some current aspect of popular music culture and studies--e.g., musical biographies, Black sound, or campus protests, for example. These pieces can, and often do, take creative forms, such as interviews between associate editor and artist(s), conversations between two or more scholars, reports from conference sessions or symposia, compilations of video lectures, and roundtable discussions on a particular topic. Due to the varied form and content of this section, associate editors work with JPMS co-editors in commissioning and vetting prospective works. Associate editors serve three-year terms. This position is unpaid and probably best suited to academics with service requirements who are looking to become better connected within popular music scholarship and develop their editorial talents, but we invite applications from anyone interested who has a strong background in the field. 

To apply, please send a CV and a letter explaining your interest and qualifications to managing editor Matthew Jones (matthew.jones@okcu.edu), co-editors Alisha Lola Jones (alj61@cam.ac.uk) and Benjamin Tausig (benjamin.tausig@stonybrook.edu), as well as current Field Notes associate editors Leah Kardos (L.Kardos@kingston.ac.uk), Jonathan Leal (lealjona@usc.edu), and Hilarie Ashton (hashton@gradcenter.cuny.edu) by August 1, 2025. Please direct any questions to the co-editors.

JPMS Call for Associate Book Reviews Editor

The Journal of Popular Music Studies (JPMS) seeks an Associate Book Reviews Editor. This editor will work closely with the Book Reviews Editor on editorial and managerial work related to the book review section, including deciding which books to review, acquiring copies from presses, assigning reviewers to books, editing reviews, and communicating with reviewers, presses, and the co-editors and managing editor. The Associate Editor is also responsible for overseeing a quarterly web listing of popular music books in print. Familiarity with popular music studies is required and experience in publishing is an asset. We welcome applications from scholars from groups traditionally underrepresented in academia.  

The expectation of journal leadership is that the associate book reviews editor will take over as book reviews editor at the completion of a three-year term.

To apply, please send a CV and a letter explaining your interest and qualifications to book reviews editors Katie Hollenbach (kbhollen@uw.edu) and Antonia Randolph (antonia.randolph@unc.edu), as well as journal co-editors Alisha Lola Jones (alj61@cam.ac.uk) and Benjamin Tausig (benjamin.tausig@stonybrook.edu) and managing editor Matthew Jones (matthew.jones@okcu.edu) by August 1, 2025. Please direct any questions to the co-editors.

JPMS Call for Web Editor

The Journal of Popular Music Studies (JPMS), the foremost North American scholarly journal for the study of popular music, seeks a new Web Editor. The Web Editor works with the editorial team, the IASPM-US Web Editors, and occasionally the UC Press web team, and is responsible for coordinating and publishing all JPMS-related web content beyond the journal itself. Duties include:

• Updating and managing the JPMS pages of the IASPM-US website, including creating blog posts in support of its new issues and New Books in Popular Music Studies list;
• Managing JPMS’s social media pages (BlueSky and Facebook);
• Coordinating with the journal’s editors to publicize new issues and journal initiatives;
• Coordinating with the IASPM-US webmaster and UC Press webmasters as needed.

The position requires no specialized programming or technology skills beyond basic computer literacy; however, familiarity with WordPress and the journal’s two social media platforms is helpful. Familiarity with popular music studies is also preferred. This is an unpaid position designed for academics seeking to perform service to the field.

To apply, please send a CV and a letter explaining your interest and qualifications to co-editors Alisha Lola Jones (alj61@cam.ac.uk) and Benjamin Tausig (benjamin.tausig@stonybrook.edu) by August 1, 2025. Please direct any questions to the co-editors.

Popular Music Books in Process series, 2025-2026 Call for Proposals

Since 2020, the Popular Music Books in Process series has held online events for music writers and scholars to showcase recent books or works in progress for an engaged audience. The series is a collaboration between the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Pop Conference, and IASPM-US. There have been more than 140 Zoom events so far, almost all preserved on YouTube. We generally run biweekly from fall through spring.

We look forward to another round of presentations. If you are publishing a book in the next year, or have ongoing work to showcase, please let us know. All kinds of formats are welcome, from readings and dialogues to roundtables, always including a generous Q&A. Some authors have even incorporated live music. We ask you to make your event conversational on some level and avoid longer solo presentations. If you need ideas for interlocutors or co-presenters, we can suggest some. Our YouTube page shows the variety of strategies presenters have used. We may group authors with kindred approaches, too.

Whatever the format, our focus remains books, whether early in gestation or after publication. We want to showcase popular music writing of many kinds, keeping our communities connected, and welcoming in new participants. Presenters are asked to do their best to attend several other sessions through the season.

Please feel free to share this call with others you think might want to join in.

For Fall 2025 and beyond, email to all seven co-organizers by August 1:

— a proposal of about 300 words describing the book or books that you would like to present, along with your preferred presentation format; 

— a bio of about 100 words for each participant;

— an indication of when would be best for you. Specific months or even a few specific dates are encouraged. Sessions in the fall will take place on Wednesdays at 5:30 pm ET. A time for spring is still to be determined, but circa Monday - Wednesday, 5-5:30 pm ET.

Thank you!

 

Kimberly Mack, krmack@illinois.edu, University of Illinois

Elena Razlogova, elena.razlogova@gmail.com, Concordia University, Montreal

Francesca Royster, froyster@depaul.edu, DePaul University

Gus Stadler, gstadler@haverford.edu, Haverford College

Alyxandra Vesey, amvesey@ua.edu, University of Alabama

Eric Weisbard, eric.weisbard@gmail.com, University of Alabama

Carl Wilson, carlzoilus@gmail.com, Slate, “Crritic!”, and other venues

Call for Proposals: Global Queer/Trans Nightlives

Special Issue of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, Volume 31 (2027)

Guest Editors: Paul David Flood, Alejandrina M. Medina, Christina Misaki Nikitin

As music moves, we groove. Or, perhaps more accurately, as queer/trans people in a musical world, we're moving with music across, through, and between nation-states, hemispheres, and a deeply interconnected and globalized world. Following Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, we are interested in how “The queer [and trans] world is a space of entrances, exits, unsystematized lines of acquaintance, project horizons, typifying examples, alternate routes, blockages, incommensurate geographies” (1998, 558). And yet, we recognize that any queer/trans utopian project, the longing and desire for an alternative to our cisheteronormative world, must also be attentive to the stratification of intimacy, capital, and solidarity in our complex queer/trans worlds. Similarly, as nightlife scholars, we acknowledge that while partying provides a safe haven in which we can be ourselves and take refuge from the cis- and heteronormativity of everyday life it also serves to reject, regulate, and discipline marginalized queer/trans people. Thus, our attention to global queer/trans nightlife grooves in the interstices of race, class, ability, migration status, nation of origin, HIV status, and history of sex work while indulging in the simultaneity of promise, possibility, pleasure and their respective failings.

This special issue of Women and Music will both contribute and respond to recent scholarship on queer/trans nightlife in music and performance studies (Maus et. al 2018; Barz & Cheng 2019; Khubchandani 2020; Livermon 2020; Adeyemi, Khubchandani, and Rivera-Servera 2021; Garcia-Mispireta 2023; Leslie Santana 2025) by exploring the sensorial, musical, and political affordances of queer/trans nightlife on a global scale. By engaging music studies’ recent global turn, we consider the circulations of racialized and gendered agency in local and global contexts to decenter normative subjectivities across economies of music, sound, and performance. Attention to the global as a framework highlights the peripheralization of alternative definitions of queer/trans, performance, intimacy, and temporality across multiple geographies. By learning from those who party on the peripheries, this special issue will reveal how nightlife affords capacious, multiplicitous, and otherwise definitions of queer/trans, shedding light onto the complexities of identity formation and maintenance through musicking and performance.

We invite proposals for short article-length contributions (6,000-8,000 words) that may address one or or more the following topics/areas:

• Musical performance in/and queer/trans nightlife spaces

• Queer/trans nightlife and diaspora

• Sexual economies in/of queer/trans nightlives

• Modes of exclusion/inclusion in queer/trans nightlife (e.g. rainbow washing)

• Conversations with DJs, drag queens, party organizers, and other nightlife laborers

• Topics relating to globalization, glocalization, (neo)colonialism, and other transnational queer/trans politics

• New methods in queer/trans theory, nightlife research, and/or music studies

• Transnational tensions of different paradigms in gender and sexuality

• Culturally specific and local conceptualizations vs LGBTQIA+ rhetoric

Projected Timeline

• Mar. 31, 2025: CFP launch

• June 2, 2025: CFP deadline

• Aug. 2025: Decisions announced

• Jan. 2026: Drafts due to editors

• Mar. 2026: 1st round edits (internal)

• Jun. 2026: Peer review

• Dec. 31, 2026: Final submission date

We particularly encourage scholars based in Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America to submit proposals. All proposals and manuscripts must be in English.

Proposals of approximately 350 words, accompanied by biographical sketches of no more than 150 words, must be submitted through Google Forms by June 2, 2025.

Please send any and all questions about the call to the guest editors at globalqueertransnightlives (at) gmail (dot) com

Let Your Body Move to the Music: Popular Music and the Body

2025 International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Canada Conference

Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), Toronto, ON

October 16-19, 2025

Early submission deadline (for possible funding consideration): April 15, 2025

Submission deadline: May 1, 2025

Submit IASPM 2025 proposals here!: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdA8-o5fR8ghL2sXceAXa9GWcAPVwjklOKsyMoIupH6CwV0uA/viewform

Alternatively, submit proposals to: iaspmcanada2025@gmail.com

 

The body has been central to Popular Music Studies since the field’s inception, as the experience of musical participation is not only an auditory process but involves a bodily engagement with sonic properties. For Susan McClary, this is precisely where the politics of music reside: where musical sound and bodies interact and where normative behaviours, subjectivities, and logics are destabilized. This conference explores the capacious theme of popular music and the body. How do our bodies mediate, enhance, and/or limit our interactions with popular music? How are practices of music-making, listening, and dancing tied to bodily capacities and desires? How does participation in popular music produce, resist, and disseminate logics of bodily norms and deviations? 

In addition to those that address broad questions about popular music and the body, we encourage submissions that relate to the following themes:

1. Feeling rhythms, temporalities, and grooves. In Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance, Tiger C. Roholt argues that “feeling a groove, and understanding it, does not occur in thought, nor in listening alone, but through the body” (1-2). How does popular music encourage or potentialize new conceptions of embodied temporalities and rhythms? What collective rhythms are made possible or impossible through popular music? How do certain rhythms and/or genres encourage specific types of bodily participation and how are these expectations challenged? 
2. Embodiment, subjectivity, and the body politic. Barry Shank argues in The Political Force of Musical Beauty that music is “one of the central cultural processes through which the abstract concept of the polis comes into bodily experience” (16). How does participation in popular music inform the way we understand ourselves, our bodies, and our place in the world? How do our bodies learn through and alongside music? How does music elicit collective feelings? How does music (dis)connect you with others and broader collective bodies?
3. Intimacy, sex, and eroticism. In “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music,” Suzanne Cusick argues that participation in music shares a closeness with sex as “a way of expressing and/or enacting relationships of intimacy through physical pleasure shared, accepted, or given” (70). How do bodily interactions with and through popular music potentialize intimacy, lust, and/or care? How does music inform sexual desires and experiences? How do specific genres of popular music encourage certain understandings of sex and eroticism? What can bodies do when they come together through music?
4. Bodily connections, bodily control, and the body as a battleground. In her book In the Houses of the Holy, Susan Fast writes that “I am in your rhythm and therefore in your body—we are one, perhaps first through sharing an ‘extradaily’ time and second through the particular rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and timbral gestures, which impact on our bodies in a particular way” (131). How does music connect bodies? How are bodies controlled (and uncontrolled) through popular music? How does the nation use popular music to compel certain embodiments and bodily capacities? How do we break free of bodily constraints? Can listeners and/or dancers experience liberation through bodily participation in popular music? What are the boundaries between “proper” and “improper” bodily engagements with popular music? What can bodies do?
5. Penetrated, enhanced, and virtual bodies. When describing her dancing practices in her book Raving, Mackenzie Wark writes that “I want the situation, the entire situation, to fuck me. I want to be penetrated by light, fog, the floor, the walls, the anonymous swaying bodies. I want to be railed by pounding sound” (38). How does music animate our bodies? How are bodies and bodily norms changing in light of contemporary music technologies? What effects does artificial intelligence have on the bodies of performers, listeners, and dancers? How are bodily capacities enhanced and altered through popular music participation? What are bodies and what might bodies be?

The Program Committee welcomes proposals for submissions on all popular music topics, not just those specified above.

 

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts of individual papers, workshops, performances and other presentations should be no longer than 300 words. The program committee is especially interested in proposals in diverse formats. Panel submissions should include a title and abstract for the panel (300 words max.) as well as titles and abstracts for the individual papers on the panel. All abstracts for a panel should be submitted together, with one member or respondent designated as the chair. Abstracts will be adjudicated individually, so it is possible for a panel to be accepted but not an individual paper and vice versa. Each abstract should also include a short biography of the author (100 words max.) including the institutional affiliation, if any, and email address of each author. Each abstract should also include five keywords. Submissions in French and English are acceptable. IASPM Canada uses anonymized peer review to vet proposals.

Submit proposals to: iaspmcanada2025@gmail.com

 

Presentation Logistics and Modality:

Papers will be limited to 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of questions. Panels will be limited to a maximum of 4 papers. Other presentations (workshops, film screenings, roundtables, etc.) will generally be limited to 60 minutes, but alternatives can be proposed. All participants must be members of IASPM-Canada at the time of the conference. Membership information is available on the following website: https://www.iaspm.ca/signup.

For questions about the conference, please contact the Program Committee Chair Richard Sutherland (rfsutherland@mtroyal.ca)  or Local Organising Chair Craig Jennex (craigjennex@torontomu.ca)

 

Program Committee Members:

Richard Sutherland, Chair (Mount Royal University)

Melissa Avdeeff (University of Stirling)

Steven Baur (Dalhousie University)

Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (University of Victoria)

Craig Jennex (Toronto Metropolitan University)

Charity Marsh (University of Regina)

Danick Trottier (Université du Québec à Montréal)

 

Popular Music Event Sponsorship Program

Call for Applications

IASPM-US

The U.S. branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music is pleased to offer financial support of up to $2,500 for graduate student-led events that promote wider engagement with current research on popular music, broadly conceived. Conferences, invited lectures, workshops, roundtable discussions, lecture-performances, or other events that invite collaboration across disciplinary, geographic, and/or institutional boundaries are eligible for support. All events receiving support must list IASPM-US as a sponsor on their program and marketing materials. Calls for applications will be circulated twice per year, in the Fall and in the Spring. Whereas the Fall application cycle was open to all IASPM-US members, the Spring 2025 cycle is restricted to proposals from graduate students.

Applicants must be current members of the IASPM-US branch in good standing with the organization. Events with open calls for participation and those that are accessible to the public will be given priority.

Applications are due April 15, 2025, and should be sent to Theo Cateforis and Kwame Harrison at tpcatefo@syr.edu and anharri5@vt.edu. Events can be in person, virtual, or hybrid. Applications must include a description of at least 250 words that outlines the intentions of the event; an explanation of how the event promotes the study of popular music; a budget; an event-planning timeline; and, if applicable, other event co-sponsors.

Midwest Graduate Music Consortium

April 18–19, 2025

University of Michigan

The 29th annual meeting of the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium (MGMC) will be hosted at the University of Michigan on April 18th and 19th, 2025. MGMC is a collaborative organization composed of the graduate students in music from the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and the University of Michigan. This conference will include paper presentations, lecture recitals, a new music concert, and a keynote address from Dr. Frederick Reece, Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Washington, School of Music.

The theme of this year’s conference is Musical Authenticity. This is a broad and ill-defined term, often associated with nature, genuineness, and reality. What does authenticity mean in the context of music? What constitutes an authentic performance? How does technology influence our perception of authenticity?

We welcome submissions from current graduate students in any discipline of music research, but we especially encourage submissions related to:

- Archival/Historical Studies

- Performance Studies

- Technology, Mediation, and Music*

- Identity and Music*

- Musical Appropriation

- Music as Memory/Nostalgia

- Musical Inauthenticity/Forgery*

- Authenticity and Genre*

*We also encourage submissions related to these topics in honor of the research of Dr. Richard Crawford, Dr. Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Dr. William P . Malm.

Submissions for paper presentations should include the title of the presentation and an abstract of no more than 300 words. Proposals should be anonymized, leaving out the applicant’s name and any other identifying information. Proposals may include a single supplemental page of musical examples, figures, tables, etc., as long as these do not appreciably add to the word count or content of the proposal.

Paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length with 10 additional minutes for questions and comments. Submissions for lecture recitals should include an abstract of no more than 300 words, a program for the performance, and a list of any technical or instrumental requirements. Proposals should be anonymized, leaving out the applicant’s name and any other identifying information. Ensembles may apply jointly. Lecture recitals will be 30 minutes in length.

The deadline to submit applications is January 17th, 2025. Proposals will be evaluated anonymously, and successful applicants will be notified by February 14th if their paper has been chosen.

Submissions and questions can be directed to midwestgraduatemusicconsortium@gmail.com.

CFP for JSAM Special Issue: “Music, Memory, and Nostalgia”

The Journal for the Society of American Music (JSAM) is calling for article submissions on a special issue on the theme of “Music, Memory, and Nostalgia.” Nostalgia studies has encouraged us to explore memory, history, and recollection in a myriad of ways. Led by the work of Svetlana Boym, David Berry, Simon Reynolds, Grafton Tanner, and Fred Davis, among others, nostalgia has been broken into several currents (restorative and reconstructive, displaced and inherited, individual and collective, simple and reflexive) in order to understand the complexities and the politics surrounding yearning, longing, memory, and loss.

This special issue brings together research that examines the presence of nostalgia(s) on memory and music making and its impact on contemporary cultures, audiences, and identity construction within the Americas. In an era of remakes, re-enactments, repetition, re-imagining, and reboots, this issue endeavors to showcase how nostalgia has become a significant cultural marker and methodology in showcasing attitudes and creative approaches to the past.

Themes for exploration might include:

• Music in the diasporas

• Gastromusicology

• Music and media

• Archives and collections

• Music and embodiment

• Music, migration, and border crossing

• Protest and movements of resistance

• Identities (race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability)

• Nationalism and cosmopolitanism

• Music and sports

• Music and monuments

• Environmental change and solastagia

  Please submit a 250-word proposal abstract by August 5, 2024 to jsameditor@gmail.com Proposal abstracts will be reviewed for potential inclusion in the journal. All authors will receive a decision by September 3, 2024. Authors that will be included in the volume should expect to have their full submissions prepared by January 31, 2025. Articles will then be evaluated by the Journal of the Society for American Music in a double-blind peer review process.

  Send questions to jsameditor@gmail.com