#  CFP: GMF2025 TRANS∗Media 

 



    ![TRANSMedia](/sites/g/files/omnuum5666/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/2026-08/unnamed.png?itok=-0w9k18h) 

 



 

  

 

 

## CALL FOR PROPOSALS: TRANS∗Media

### **Harvard University Department of Music**  
**February 28–March 1, 2025**

The 2025 Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference invites proposals for individual papers or alternative-format presentations (lecture-recitals, performance demonstrations, or other scholarly and creative presentations) engaging with this year’s theme: "TRANS∗Media." We welcome submissions from graduate students, researchers, musicians, sound artists, and practitioners from diverse disciplines to join us in exploring the role of music and sound in relating trans∗ness to experiences of moving across, between, and beyond multiple media forms, technologies, and narratives. We are particularly interested in proposals that c*enter the works, practices, experiences, and lives of transgender and transsexual individuals and communities*. The conference will feature a keynote address by Dr. McKenzie Wark, author of *Raving* (2023), *Reverse Cowgirl* (2020) and *A Hacker’s Manifesto* (2006), who will join Dr. Kaleb Goldschmitt, Dr. Stephan Pennington, and Dean Julia Golden in a roundtable discussion on the conference’s theme. We will also host a video art screening and talkback with Dr. Nguyễn Tân Hoàng, author of *A View From the Bottom* (2014) and creator of video works such as *Forever Bottom!*, *K.I.P.*, and *look\_im\_azn*, as well as a concert featuring the new music quartet, Yarn/Wire.

We address two principal questions: How does sound and/or music move across, between, and beyond media? And how does sound and/or music move media?

The program committee welcomes proposals exploring any aspect of the dynamic interplay between media, movement, and music/sound, inspired by the expansive possibilities encompassed by “TRANS∗.” Possible topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

- Trans∗ listening, musicking, vocality
- Trans∗ technicity and technologies
- Trans∗ media forms, connectivities, and histories
- Trans∗ and transmedia storytelling, intermedia, and media mixture
- Trans∗ identities, experiences, and epistemologies
- Trans∗ of color critique
- Trans∗ disability critique and trans∗/crip theory
- Trans∗ radical critique (Marxism, anarchism, etc.)
- Trans∗ as method, methodology, praxis
- Trans∗ theories in the classroom, campuses, communities

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to <https://forms.gle/ykPVpwPbtKQ8VbSP8> by Sunday, January 5th, 2025 at 11:59PM. **Please remove all personal identifying information from the text of the proposal.** Submissions after this date may be considered if space allows. Presentations are limited to 20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute Q&amp;A. Proposals for alternative-format presentations should include a list of technical requirements in the submission form. Notice of acceptance will be sent by mid-January. A limited number of travel bursaries will be offered to participants. For further details, please contact us at <stephenai@g.harvard.edu>.

Program Committee:  
Shiva Ramkumar  
Juan Patricio Saenz  
Darcy Copeland