Call for Presentations: 2023 Pop Conference

Call for Presentations: 2023 Pop Conference
“Let’s Get it Together”: Gatherings, Club Cultures, Parties, and Beyond”
April 27-30, 2023

Deadline: 01.12.2022

Several years of quarantine and social distancing have set ablaze the desire to gather safely in community in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. This year’s convergence compels a reflection on the power of getting together in the past and present while acknowledging the necessity for new ways of congregating.

So, “Let’s get it together!” Let's get loud, because we need a holiday, a holy day on the dance floor or beyond. Remember when the DJ dropped the beat, the crowd went wild, and you felt the club vibrating as you showed up in your best outfit? _Work!_ Inside, a kaleidoscope of bodies dancing, watching, sweating, kissing, touching. Music transports, envelops, heals, connects, the dance floor (whatever that looks like!) becomes a classroom, where learning to play with gender, perform experimental versions of self is possible. Where being in communion among strangers, friends or lovers compels gatherers to sweat out the tears, bring in the joy, feel the pleasure. “Can you feel it?,” the desire for sacred spaces of communal celebration in a time of flux.

Gathering to celebrate is and has been a key technique for many to continuously resist land occupation, dehumanization and policing of their existence. From the cabaret, juke joint, hootenanny and honkytonk to the punk pit, rave, tango ballroom. From break dancing, salsa, norteña or 1990s quebradita to the remixed sounds of traditional Pow Wow music and electronica, club cultures, broadly and poetically defined for this call, have launched and sustained innumerable styles of music and dance. From festivals to backyard parties and Tea dances to BBQs, ballrooms, community centers, parking lots and cars, abandoned warehouses, dive bars, circuit parties, parties in the forest, swap meet dance competitions, fairy gatherings, and queer ritual, we wanna dance. At the club or other gathering spaces, yet to be manifest, we can enter the sequined portal Mexican pop diva Gloria Trevi sings us through.

This call for presentations explodes and expands the idea of “the club” as strictly physical, locatable, enclosed, and opens up to the unenclosed, ephemeral–the “club” as what we want it to be. Walls
crumble and sounds expand through music, memory, affect, the resonance of vibrations, lingering remembrances of scent and stench, the unrelenting histories of subjugation, relocation, and dislocation, pulsing through every beat, stomp of a foot, clap of a hand.

“Don'tcha wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don'tcha wanna dance.”
We do.
You won’t break my soul.

Fugitive spaces of joy, pleasure and sweat, have been and still are sites of political organizing and collectivity, as “[d]ance sets politics in motion” (Delgado and Muñoz). How have gatherings, then and now, functioned as a community resource? How are local communities recovering histories of nightclubs and makeshift gathering spots that have disappeared or shuttered too early by forces of gentrification or what Amin Ghazzani has described as “the increased financialization of the urban environment”? As many make their way through life during a constant state of emergency under capitalism with health emergencies, pandemics, structural violence, police brutality, environmental injustice, grief, loss, hate –many still make space to celebrate by connecting. What role have club cultures, dance floors and party spaces of all kinds play in a certain kind of erotic release? Finally, can party spaces, even virtual ones, reproduce the systems many are trying to escape, and how, in an on-going pandemic, is it possible to hold the dance floor as a space of repair, regeneration and release?

This call for papers doubles as an invitation to party in-person, safely, as we remember this pandemic is not yet over. Yes! This is a celebration of life and love and all the other feels, a moment in the DJ booth. Let's get it together, a renaissance for all who need it. Let’s walk into a sequined world twirling to the beat.

We encourage innovative and experimental submission formats including but not limited to:

• live modular performances and other live / movement performance
  practices

• VJing

• video work

• sound work

• fashion films

• spoken word

• sonic-spatial tours of the city

• Conversations with pioneers of musical gathering

Topics can include but are not limited to:

• Nightlife

• Party favors

• Gentrification

• Outdoor gatherings

• Venue Closures

• The Last Song

• Sound systems

• Shebeens

• Festivals

• Virtual Dance Parties

• Native club nights

• Pow Wow meets EDM

• Lesbian Spaces

• Sacred gatherings

• The Remix

• Savoy Ballroom, Paradise Garage, and Other Legendary Dance Floors

• Club Fashion

• After Hours / The After Party

• Club Lighting

• Coffeehouses

• Tea Dances

• Dance and Choreography

• Queer Time at Night

• Drag

• Raving

• Sonic Geographies

• Playlists

• DJ Culture and DJ Technologies

• Dramaturgy of the night

• Strip Clubs

• Heavy metal parking lots

• Femmeness as abundance

• Digital culture as refuge

• Electronic Dance Music: disco, house, techno, vogue beats

• Voguing

• Fan culture

• Body politic/fashion

• Barndance

And more!!

Proposals are due December 1, 2022

Upload RTF or Word files (no PDFs) to bit.ly/popconproposal2023 so
that the conference organizer Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr. and the program
committee can access proposals.

Proposals are limited to one per person (participation on a roundtable
does not count towards that limit). Individual proposals should be up to
300 words, with a 75-word bio. For multiple person proposals, include a
one-paragraph overview and individual statements of up to 300 words with
a 75-word bio for each participant. For roundtables, outline the subject
in up to 500 words, include a 75-word bio and email contact for each
participant.

For all proposals, please describe how you plan on presenting in regard
to style/format. If accepted, virtual presentations must be
pre-recorded.

Questions? Send them to popconproposal2023[at]gmail[dot]com

2023 Pop Conference Programming Committee:
Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr., Madison Moore, Michelle Habell-Pallán,
Charles Hughes, Jewly Hight