I’m delighted once again to be involved in the next Rhythm Changes international jazz studies conference, as part of the organising committee. This is the sixth conference we have put on as a team over almost a decade, in Amsterdam, Salford, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Amsterdam and now Graz.
Here is the call for papers.
Keynote Speakers
Prof. Jason Stanyek (University of Oxford)
Prof. Marie Buscatto (University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
Closing Address
Prof. Alan Stanbridge (University of Toronto)
We invite paper submissions for Jazz Journeys, a four-day multidisciplinary conference bringing together leading researchers across the arts and humanities. The event will feature academic papers, panels, roundtables, and poster sessions, as well as an exciting programme of performances by students and staff of the Jazz Institute of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
Jazz has typically been the music of journeys and mobility. Its history is inseparable from global patterns of migration and changing demographics, as well as new forms of media communication and cultural production. The music speaks as much to dreams of escape as it does to the desire to put down roots; it continually seeks new pathways to meaning, even as it reinforces old boundaries. Jazz Journeys seeks to critically explore how ideas of mobility, movement, travel, exchange, voyaging, border-crossing and odyssey have shaped – and continue to shape – debates about the music’s past and future. We welcome papers addressing the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including cultural studies, musicology, cultural theory, music analysis, jazz history, media studies, and practice-based research. Within the general theme of Jazz Journeys, we have identified several sub-themes. Please clearly identify which theme you are referring to in your proposal.
Journeys — Mobility and Travels
This theme addresses hemispheric or global cultural movements in jazz, from the legacies of transatlantic slavery to the emergence of jazz communities throughout the world. We invite papers that engage with the different kinds of journeys that musicians undertake, from stylistic development to their involvement in the processes of migration and mobility, cross-cultural exchange, colonialism, and empire(s).
Journeys — Journées
This theme explores jazz as a companion to everyday life in private and public spaces, in the light of changing modes of interaction with the music. Are new technologies and platforms such as Spotify and Facebook changing the way we deal with jazz? How does jazz feature as a soundtrack to our ordinary existence? How do such regular interactions (or the avoidance of such interactions) reveal ideas about the meaning and value of jazz?
Journeys — Journal — Diary: History, Narrative, (Auto)biography
This theme explores the ways in which the experience of music is captured and the story of jazz told, from dominant narratives to (auto)biographies, popular tales to hidden histories. We welcome papers that interrogate dominant forms of causal and linear narration and engage with the ways in which the stories of jazz are written, adapted and changed through time. The theme seeks to engage with the underlying values that shape understandings of jazz and influenced what is celebrated and what ignored.
Journeys — Journals — Research
Fifty years ago, the founding of Jazzforschung / Jazz Research and Beiträge zur Jazzforschung / Studies in Jazz Research in Graz positioned jazz studies as an important area of musicology and related disciplines. We invite papers that explore the gaps, limitations and tensions in our understanding of jazz research, as well as new directions in the field.
Journeys — Journalism, Media and Technologies
This theme investigates the role of writing, mediatisation and technological change in the production, dissemination, and experience of jazz. We invite papers focusing on the ways in which ideas, sounds and images about the music circulate globally between artists, critics, audiences, and producers.
Journeys — Time(s) and Temporalities
This theme explores concepts of time and temporality in jazz, from the uses of multiple tempos and time signatures to theories and practices of repetition and revision. We invite papers that respond to the different times, temporalities, tempos, moments, instances, junctures, speeds, passages, and movements in and out of time that characterise jazz history and its practices.
Jazz Journeys — The Seductions of Alliteration
This theme addresses the many journeys in language, sound, gesture, and image that shape our understanding of jazz, including spontaneous writing, creative writing from the Harlem Renaissance, and Beat literature. We welcome papers that experiment with how to get from A to B, that sound out new ways of speaking of and thinking about jazz, and envision new practices and processes of writing about, and performing with, the music.
Please submit proposals (max. 250 words), including a short biography (max. 50 words) and institutional affiliation, as a Word document to Christa Bruckner-Haring at rhythmchanges@kug.ac.at.
The deadline for proposals is 15 September 2018; outcomes will be communicated to authors by 15 October 2018. All paper submissions will be considered by the conference committee, consisting of Christa Bruckner-Haring (Chair; Graz), André Doehring (Graz), Nicholas Gebhardt (BCU), George McKay (UEA), Loes Rusch (Amsterdam Conservatory), Catherine Tackley (Liverpool), Walter van de Leur (Amsterdam Conservatory/UvA) and Tony Whyton (BCU).
Jazz Journeys continues to build on the legacy of the research project Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities (2010–2013), which was funded as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme. In the spirit of Rhythm Changes, the project team continues to develop networking opportunities and champion collaborative research in transnational jazz studies.
Updates on the conference and information about travel and accommodation will be available on the Rhythm Changes website and via our Facebook page.