Call for Papers: Song Studies

The Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies and THALIA, research group on the Interplay of Theatre, Literature & Media in Performance, present:

SONG STUDIES 2020

EXPLORING INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO SONGS AND PRACTICES OF SINGING (1200-TODAY)

Ghent University, 1-3 July 2020

Keynote speaker: Monique Scheer (Tübingen University)

Call for papers

The singing voice is a medium of expression that is found in all times and cultures. People have always been singing, not only to perform entertainingly, but also to express emotions or to embody identities. This has for example made collective singing (and listening) practices a primary way for people to articulate and embody the identities that are fundamental to the existence of social groups. The bodily and sensory experience of moving and sounding together in synchrony, enables individuals to experience feelings of togetherness with others.

Song is the versatile medium facilitating such processes. Songs can evoke and channel emotions, employing them for specific (or less specific) means. As a multimodal genre, song enables not only the articulation and embodiment of ideas; as an inherently oral and intangible medium, songs can move through space and time, transgressing any material form. Therefore, songs have proven an ideal tool for the distribution of news, contentious ideas, or mobilising messages.

This conference aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines investigating song (for example musicology, literary studies, history, sociology, performance studies, cognition studies, anthropology, etc.). The focus will be on the definition of possible approaches to the study of this medium (both in its material and performed existence), its performances (in any form) and reception (in any context). Research examples may cover songs written and sung in any culture and language, and any (historical) period. Common ground will be found through concepts, approaches and methodologies, encouraging an interdisciplinary and transhistorical dialogue, breaking ground for a new research field: song studies.

Possible research areas and questions to be explored are:
– how to study the multimodality of the genre, acknowledging both textual and musical characteristics, and its performative nature;
– the sensory/bodily and emotional/affective experience of listening and singing;
– cognitive and/or affective processes of singing (and collective singing practices);
– how to study the performative aspects of songs in historical contexts;
– the ‘power’/agency of song;
– the role of song and singing in social processes and historical developments; etc.

We invite proposals for 20-minute individual papers (max. 300 words) or alternative formats (pre-submission inquiry is encouraged). As the aim of this conference is to facilitate dialogue, there will be ample time for discussion and exchange. Please send your proposal, including your name, academic affiliation and a short biographical note, no later than 20 December 2019 to renee.vulto@ugent.be.

For more information, visit: https://www.songstudies.ugent.be/

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Lecture: The Empire of the Senses

On Tuesday 3 October, Daniele Hacke will visit ACCESS to give a lecture on sensory knowledge, communication and cultural encounters in the early Americas. You do not need to register for this lecture. We hope to see you there!

ACCESS Seminar on cultural specificity of embodied emotions and smell

The Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies (ACCESS) organizes a seminar on the:

Cultural specificity of embodied emotions and smell

In this seminar Zhen Pan and Caro Verbeek address the question of the human universality and historical specificity of emotional expression and the experience of smell. Please be welcome to hear, see and inhale!

De reuk, Cornelis Dusart, 1670 – 1704, engraving, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Place:                Meertens Instituut: Joan Muyskenweg 25, Amsterdam

Date:                 Tuesday 22 March 2016

Time:                15.00-17.00

Register:           Please register using the form below this announcement.

Entrance:          Free

Info:                 erika.kuijpers@vu.nl

Program:

ACCESS in the press

ACCESS-director Inger Leemans comments in Elsevier on the historicity of emotions and historical changes in thinking on how and where they are felt.

 

Lecture on Corpulence and the Emotions

On November 3, Professor Christopher E. Forth will present his research on the cultural history of fat in a lecture at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, entitled ‘Fat and Happy? Corpulence and the Emotions in the Modern West.’

The old English proverb ‘laugh and grow fat’ seems counter-intuitive to our modern outlook on corpulence. Implying that mirthful happiness is at once cause and effect of fleshy bodies, this bit of traditional wisdom flies in the face of contemporary beliefs that fatness is more likely to be symptomatic of unhappiness and desperation. Surveying a range of texts from antiquity to the present, this paper unpacks the complicated relationship between corpulence and the emotions in European culture. It proposes that our current skepticism about fatness and happiness partly reflects the inherently ambiguous ways in which ‘fat’ and ‘fattening’ have been understood in the West.

15.30-18.00 hrs in room 10A-20 in the Main Building of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105.

ACCESS director Inger Leemans nominated

ACCESS director Inger Leemans has been nominated for Viva400 2015: 400 women who excelled this year. Inger’s nomination is based on her research in the History of Emotions and the development of digital humanities techniques for emotion research. To support the nomination:

http://www.viva400.nl/knappe-koppen/inger-leemans/