CFP: GMF2024 "An Adventurous Undertaking"

Harvard University Graduate Music Forum Conference, Call for Papers:
“An Adventurous Undertaking”: Reconsidering Music Criticism in the 21st Century
April 12-13, 2024 (in person)
Deadline: January 22, 2024

In 1947 the Harvard Music Department hosted the Symposium on Music Criticism, which brought 800 attendees from across the country to hear reflections on the topic from prominent art critics, musicologists, and composers. In light of the enormous musical, social and media developments since the mid-1940s, we take the opportunity of this anniversary to return to the topic of music criticism explored at Harvard 76 years ago. We seek to revisit existential questions about the practice and purpose of public writing about music, though with a critical eye, and ear, to the subsequent transformations in music, media, and the cultures that consume them, and to the many peoples and musical traditions the original symposium neglected.

The 2024 Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference invites proposals for individual paper presentations (20-minutes) that engage with the history and practice of music criticism, broadly understood. We encourage submissions from scholars and practitioners and welcome perspectives from the wide range of disciplines that intersect with music writing in the public sphere, with particular interest in contributions that address issues at the intersections of race, gender, and class in the United States or elsewhere.

Possible contribution topics include, but are not limited to:
· The historical musical press, in the US or internationally
· The contemporary musical press (broadly conceived), in the US or internationally
· The profession of the music critic today (in the US or internationally)
· The relationship of music criticism & musicology (historically & today)
· The music critic and power dynamics
· The responsibilities of the music critic (to which audiences, performers, editors, powers that be, etc.), including: responsibilities of music criticism to local communities and cultures
· Music criticism as pedagogy
· Music criticism and specialization (musical genre, audience, etc.)
· Criticism as a style of writing/interpretation/journalism
· Music critics’ role in the reception of particular musical works/styles/performers/etc.

Keynote speaker: Lucy Caplan (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
Film screening & talk-back: Fabiola Méndez’s “Negrura” (2022) 

To submit a proposal, please fill out the following Google form: https://forms.gle/8eGh1EwP5Y9Vrsqw9

Please visit our website for more information: https://sites.harvard.edu/graduate-music-forum-24/

Please address any questions to: gmfconference2024 -at- gmail.com
Elaine Fitz Gibbon & Leo Sarbanes