CfP: Gendering Music Matter, Kopenhagen
Conference: Gendering Music Matter. Power, Affects, and Infrastructures of Music Industries
Deadline: 24.11.2023
The gender gap in the music industry (understood in its broadest sense) has been evident, perceptible, measurable, and publicly discussed for many years However, public discussions and policy initiatives on 'gender inequality' and 'gender balance' often focus on increasing the number of women and gender non-conforming professionals, leaving the patriarchal infrastructures and cultures of the music industries unchanged and unchallenged.
This conference insists on the importance of shifting the analytical focus - at least for a moment - away from the numbers, skills, talents, and productions of individuals in order to look towards their embeddedness and orientation in gendered, social, economic, and historical conventions. What if we approach the music industries not as a blank canvas or smooth space, but as infrastructures that privilege certain bodies and embodied conventions while limiting others? And what if we try to uncover what Keller Easterling has called the "accidental, covert or stubborn forms of power [...] hiding in the folds of infrastructure space"? Or how about examining the affects, emotions, and reasoning of individuals including, for example, what Sara Ahmed has called the “affects of disorientation”, and look at how these experiences come to orient, position and affect people and bodies in different ways as they navigate the infrastructures of music industries around the world? Or what if we explore how agents within music industries tinker, remix, alter, appropriate, or hack the dominant infrastructure in order to forge not only new material arrangements, but also alternative anti-sexist ways of imagining possible futures? And last but not least, what can we as researchers do to support and facilitate initiatives and actions of change within these infrastructures of which we ourselves are a part?
By bringing together intersectional fields of music studies, we hope to bring new perspectives to questions of power, affect and the infrastructures of the music industries. We therefore invite a broad range of speakers working with, for instance, feminist musicology, gender studies, ethnomusicology/music anthropology, popular music studies, organizational anthropology, cultural-historical activity theory, critical race theory, affect theory, infrastructure theory, queer and post-phenomenology, disability studies, sound studies, post-structuralism, queer theory, platform studies, actor-network theory, science and technology studies, music history, and music pedagogy.
Call for papers: Potential themes
Potential themes might include (but are not limited to) critical perspectives on gender and:
cultures and infrastructures of music scenes
biases in music and cultural organizations
intersectionality in music research
music as labor/work (including union work etc.)
career breaks and sustainability in music work
pregnancy, motherhood, aging and menopause of music professionals
musician’s bodily changes and transitions
(fragile) masculinity in music life
music instruments and physical infrastructure
technology and digital infrastructures in music organization
the queering of musical spaces
separatist music communities
affects and feelings in music organizations
“anti-gender movements” and counter-initiatives against feminist and diversity work in music environments
music, memory culture and historical approaches
bodies on and beyond the music stage
the socialities of music
music and sustainability
cultural policies
historiographies of feminist musicology and music anthropology
Applied research in music life
Submit an abstract of up to 250 words to Katrine Wallevik (xnv102 @ hum.ku.dk) or Kristine Ringsager (kringsager @ hum.ku.dk) by 24 November 2023.
Please include:
Your name and a short bio
Your email address
Panel proposals are more than welcome - please approach us if you have a good idea!
The conference is hosted by the music anthropological research project Gendering Music Matter (GEMMA) that examines the mechanisms that promote or hinder equal participation for professionals working with music production within the Danish popular music industry.