CfP: Song, Stage and Screen (25-28.06.2025, Chicago)

Song, Stage and Screen 2025
Call for Proposals

Meet Us in the Middle
June 25-28, 2025
Hosted by the College of Communication at DePaul University 

Deadline: January 5, 2025

Song, Stage and Screen 2025 will convene in Chicago, Illinois, at DePaul University’s College of Communication from June 25-28, 2025. Sometimes referred to as the “Second City” or “Heart of America,” Chicago is a vital (and often unsung) incubator for musical theater, dance, and opera productions. 

The location of this year’s conference invites us to contemplate the notion of “the middle,” and to suggest ways that “middles” inform the creation, circulation, consumption and study of musical theater. In recent years, scholars in musical theater studies and adjacent fields have demonstrated that “middlegrounds” can be a robust site for analysis. Stacy Wolf and Jake Johnson have directed our attention to the existence and importance of musical theater in the “middle” of the United States, while Derek Miller has encouraged study of “average” commercial productions and theater careers that are neither especially glorious nor terrible, but that ultimately drive the industry. Colleen Rua has addressed how musicals like West Side Story and In the Heights portray quotidian aspects of Latinx life, while Koritha Mitchell has argued that low or fair-to-middling standards enable and elevate white mediocrity. 

For the purpose of this year’s conference, “the middle” can refer to: 

  • Geographic centrality: a hub or crossroads

  • Symbolic centrality: primacy or concentration

  • Measures of time, distance or process: a midpoint or median; en medias res

  • Political centrism: neutrality, compromise, or nonpartisanship 

  • Normalcy or mediocrity: middling quality; the middle of the pack

  • Conventionality or provincialism: middlebrow tastes

  • Between elite and inferior status: middle-class or mid-level success

Panels, papers and presentations might address:

  • Centers of theatre production (especially those beyond New York and London)

  • Musicals from or about a geographic center; the middle of a country or region 

  • The midpoint of a musical theater artist’s career or oeuvre 

  • The developmental (and thus incomplete) process

  • Liminal states and hybrid works

  • Musicals of average success or middling merit

  • Middle-billed labor: supporting actors, ensemble members, backstage workers

  • Musical theater as middlebrow entertainment

  • Works that move from the margins to the middle (or vice-versa)

  • The exigencies, ethics, and consequences of studying and producing the middle

  • Methods of resisting or rejecting the middle 

Instructions for proposing an individual paper: Individual papers will be 20 minutes in length with 10 minutes for discussion. Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to this form.

Instructions for proposing a round-table or workshop: Round-tables and workshops will last between one and two hours depending on need. Round-tables should engage participants and attendees in discussions or activities about a specific theme or topic. The focus can be scholarly (e.g., related to the conference theme; focused on a collection of the repertoire; honing a particular methodology; unpacking a particular theoretical lens). It can also center practical, career-oriented themes (e.g., jobs; pedagogy; publishing). Round-tables and workshops should be convened by groups of two to five people and can be organized in a number of ways. Proposals should explain clearly how attendees will participate. A workshop might include discussion questions, for example, or breakout sessions, or a series of activities. Workshop conveners should use no more than one-third of the allotted time to present the topic at hand. The remainder of the time should be spent engaging with attendees.

To apply to convene a round-table or workshop, please submit a proposal identifying the workshop topic, its relationship to the conference theme and the names of the conveners. The proposal should specify how the time will be used. Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to this form.

Please submit your abstract for an individual paper or a round-table/workshop via this form by Friday January 5, 2025.

Our international program committee will perform an anonymous review of all submissions. Prospective participants will be notified by the end of January 2025.

Conference speakers must be current members of ISSM. There will be a modest conference fee for all attendees.  

Conference Co-Chairs: Kelly Kessler, Dustyn Martincich, and Bryan M. Vandevender

2025 Conference Program Committee: Ryan Donovan (chair), Eric Glover, Kelly Kessler, Brandon LaReau, Ashley Pribyl, Guro von Germeten

For more information about the International Society for the Study of Musicals (ISSM), our conference, Song, Stage and Screen, and/or our journal, Studies in Musical Theatre, please visit issmusicals.org

CFP, International Conference, NewsPenelope Braune