CfA: Summer School "Music, Emotions and Pandemics", Vienna 4-7 July 2023

GOING VIRAL Summer School: Music, Emotions and Pandemics in Past and Present

Date: 4-7 July, 2023

Location: mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Austria)

Deadline for applications: 15 May 2023

For: international MA, RMA and (prospective) PhD students in musicology
Language: English
Lectures, seminars and workshops with:
REMI CHIU (Loyola University Maryland)
MARIE LOUISE HERZFELD-SCHILD (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
AUSTIN C. OKIGBO (University of Colorado, Boulder)

The European Research Council (ERC) project /GOING VIRAL: Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679-1919)/ organizes a Summer School that will take place from 4 to 7 July 2023 in Vienna and is open to international MA, RMA and (prospective) PhD students in musicology who are interested in*the role of music during major health crises in past and present*. During four in-depth study days, three internationally renowned experts in the field of music and pandemics will discuss their research with a group of max. 15 students.

The Summer School will build on the general research agenda of GOING VIRAL (see the project’s website https://goingviral.hypotheses.org) and at the same time add different perspectives and case studies to it. With their individual musicological research focusses, the three lecturers cover an extraordinarily wide range of methodological, theoretical, historical and geographical areas: from the 15th century to the present, from the Bubonic Plague to HIV/Aids, from Western, Southern and Eastern Europe to the US and Africa, from music’s theory and cultural history to ethnomusicology – embedded in different interdisciplinary contexts.

The Summer School aims to provide deeper discussions of and insights into the role music has played in the emotional landscape of pandemics. During lectures, seminars and workshops, we will address questions such as: How did music practices change at the beginning, during and after pandemics in terms of their discursive, social, spatial, material, sensual and bodily aspects, and which emotional meanings evolved through these practices? How were the disruptions that pandemics entailed emotionally negotiated by musical practices? How were these music practices shaped by emotional discourses and emotional regimes from medical, legal, political, theological authorities? Which emotional meanings did contemporary discourses ascribe to these musical practices? How were gender or minority differences entangled in these music-emotional practices, with attention to, for instance, the experience of Jews, non-citizens, the homeless, minstrels, prostitutes and travelers? And finally: (How) can we compare these historical findings to our own experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic?

In keynotes, the three lecturers will present their own research on music and pandemics. In seminars, we will discuss methodological tools and theoretical frameworks for studying music in different pandemic situations throughout history; these will include cultural and historical analyses as well as approaches from communication, trauma and religious studies, anthropology, psychometrics and medical humanities. In line with GOING VIRAL’s research agenda, particular attention will be given to approaches from the history of emotions. During workshops, the participants will prepare and present different case studies on a topic on their own choice.

We accept applications for the GOING VIRAL Summer School until* 15 May 2023 *(unless maximum capacity has been reached).

Please click here https://goingviral.hypotheses.org/summerschool for further information about the application process, the project and the program.