The fifth Annual Conference of the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group, in collaboration with the Music and Philosophy Study Group of the American Musicological Society and De Musica – Laboratório de Estética e Filosofia da Música (Brasil).
Optional) Theme: Music and the Senses
Co-hosted by the Departments of Music and Philosophy at King’s College London and the Institute of Musical Research, University of London
17-18 July 2015
Keynote speakers include:
Professor Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University)
Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay (Harvard University)
Plenary panellists:
Professor Mark Evan Bonds (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Professor Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh)
Professor Hannah Ginsborg (University of California at Berkeley)
The RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group warmly invites paper submissions for this two-day international conference. The event, the fifth of an annual series of conferences run by the Study Group, will offer an opportunity for philosophers, music scholars, and others interested in philosophically-oriented research about music to discuss and debate their work in a collaborative setting. The conference presumes inclusive definitions of both music and philosophy. We take music to include all forms and genres of music, art music and popular, secular and sacred, raucous and refined, from any and all historical and geographical locales. We take philosophy to include analytic, continental, classical, and non-Western thought, as well as critical theory. Regardless of disciplinary affiliation,
the committee seeks conceptually rigorous and clearly articulated research that presents a novel argument and advances understanding of its topic.
The optional theme of this year’s conference is “Music and the Senses”, however submissions on all topics relating to music and philosophy are welcome.
Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):
• Music, emotion, and affect; emotion vs. perception
• The partition and integration of the senses
• Philosophical approaches to auditory perception
• Non-aural aspects of musical experience (visual, tactile, gustatory, olfactory)
• Sound in the history and anthropology of the senses
• Music’s relationship to technology, technique, and distributed cognition
• Music, sex, pleasure, intimacy, and the erotic
• Individual vs. collective musical experience
• Attention, inattention, and altered states
• New approaches to music and phenomenology
• Atmosphere, immersion, Stimmung, mood, and vibe
• Formalisms: regressive, normative, and revolutionary
• Philosophical approaches to entertainment and distraction
• Music, capitalism, ideology, and the senses
• Music, movement, and dance
• Ontologies of sounds, tones, and music
Proposals are invited for:
Individual papers (20 minutes) – up to 350 words
Collaborative papers (30 minutes) – up to 500 words
Lecture recitals (30 minutes) – up to 350 words
Themed paper sessions of three or four individual (20 minute) papers – 350 words per paper plus 350 words outlining the rationale for the session. Ninety-minute sessions in innovative formats – up to 1000 words outlining the format and content of the session
Please submit proposals by email in a word document attachment: conference2015@musicandphilosophy.ac.uk
The deadline for proposals is 7 March 2015; outcomes will be communicated to authors by 21 March 2015.
All paper submissions will be considered by the programme committee:
Bill Brewer (Department of Philosophy, King’s College London)
Michael Gallope (Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota)
Andrew Huddleston (Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London)
Tomas McAuley (Department of Musicology, Indiana University)
Nanette Nielsen (Department of Musicology, University of Oslo)
Hannah Templeton (Department of Music, King’s College London)
Mario Videira (Department of Music, University of São Paulo)
Nick Zangwill (Department of Philosophy, University of Hull)
Reasonably priced university accommodation will be available.
The event is generously supported by King’s College London, the Institute of Musical Research, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, the University of Hull, the British Society of Aesthetics, the Mind Association, and the Royal Musical Association.