Vendredi 14 Avril, 2018 —— La rédaction.

(Dis-)Orientations of Popular Music

28th Conference of the German Society for Popular Music Studies (GfPM)

16–18 November 2018, Oldenburg
Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: 15 May 2018
Submit to: abstracts@popularmusikforschung.de

For more details

Department of Music, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany

In Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed describes orientation as a fundamental function of human experience. Significances of orientation range from inclinations and attitudes to processes of physical and spatial direction. In their multiple dimensions, orientations condition the way in which bodies experience strangeness, familiarity, normality, belonging, and displacement. As functions that fundamentally shape ways of being in the world, orientations therefore must be regarded as nodal points in the attribution of power and control. Orienting and disorienting means intervening into how we physically and mentally inhabit the world.

Music not only interacts with various types of orientation – ranging from the field of politics to space, time, nation, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality – it also serves as a medium through which orientations are performed. In order to unravel the power structures that shape – and are shaped by – musical practices, it is therefore essential to inquire about the ways in which different orientations manifest themselves in music. In what ways can popular music serve as a medium of orientation? What are the mechanisms by which popular music is oriented? What is the relationship between music’s performative orientations and its sound (e.g. extreme-right music with a white, nativist agenda based on African American music)? Who is invested in popular music’s orientations?

The conference is organized as follows:

I (Dis-)Orientation and Intersectional Difference in Music

II (Dis-)Orientation and Music Education/Pedagogy

III (Dis-)Orientation and the Field of Popular Music Studies

We welcome contributions by PhD students and early career researchers. The conference will be held in English and German.