[ecrea] Conferences and Calls: Panelists and a respondant for “Diva” panel for the 2016 EMP Pop Conference, From a Whisper to a Scream: The Voice in Music

The EMP Pop Conference is being held April 14-17, 2016, in Seattle, 
Washington this year on “Voice in Music.” If you’re interesting in 
participating with the “Diva” panel as a panelist or as a respondent, 
kindly send an abstract (up to 300 words) to Shannon Wong Lerner at 
(swlerner /at/ email.unc.edu) by November the 2nd. I am considering the 
following topics for a “Diva” panel, but not limited to:

1.)     the materiality/immateriality of the "Diva's" voice when adapted 
from opera to popular culture and mass culture
2.)     the “authenticity” of the “Diva’s” voice as compared to the artifice
3.)     the personality of the “Diva” and how audiences perceive of her 
voice
4.)     the expectation for the “Diva” to be experienced as a “live” 
performer as compared to being experienced as “mediatized”
5.)     identity and the “Diva”: how race, femininity, sexual 
orientation, and nationality (or other aspects of identity) changed the 
public perception of the "Diva's" voice
6.)     how theories of modernity specifically have had an effect on the 
way we frame the “Diva’s” voice to address mobility, liminality, use of 
technology, and/or her participation with popular culture/recording/film

See the CFP following this post to learn more about this conference.  I 
look forward to hearing from other Diva-scholars, and learning more 
about your work.

Sincerely,

Shannon

Shannon Wong Lerner
Ph.D. Candidate Communication Studies
Communication Studies Doctoral Candidate
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
(swlerner /at/ email.unc.edu)


Call for Proposals, 2016 EMP Pop Conference

April 14-17, 2016, Seattle, Washington

> From a Whisper to a Scream: The Voice in Music



The voice in music goes beyond singing: “The ‘grain’ is the body in the 
voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs,” 
Roland Barthes wrote. Voices insert the self into music, Billie Holiday 
stopping poet Frank O’Hara’s breath with choices of tempo and timbre, 
Neil Young transfixing rock fans with his “Old Black” Gibson electric 
guitar tone, the sentimiento expressed in the sung bolero resonating 
across the Americas. Finding their voice, performers – on stage and 
camera, recording in studios – make us identify, naturalize change. But 
voices embody community too, as in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the 
“Black National Anthem” written by (pioneering popular music scholar) 
James Weldon Johnson, and they are the foundation of protest, the 
megaphone for social change. A switch in voice, from croon to rasp to 
rap to Auto-Tune, alters meaning and social statement.



For this year’s EMP Pop Conference, we invite presentations that 
explore, across all styles and time periods, the role of voice in music. 
This might include:



--Vocalization: the technical, theatrical, and technological 
underpinnings of bringing out the voice in music; creating vocal 
“characters” and characteristics

--Vocal Chords: the body in music; sonic materiality; medical and 
scientific factors

--Communal Voices: group singing, from choirs and quartets to karaoke; 
choices of accent and identity

--Instruments as Voices, Voices as Instruments: talking drums, crying 
guitars, wailing horns; vocal breathiness, sound but not words, 
articulate inarticulacy

--Voces: speech, song and noise outside Eurocentric sound making; how 
voices carry U.S. pop styles around the globe and forms from beyond the 
U.S mainstream are woven into that fabric

--Challenging Voices: naturalized ideals or expectations of race, 
gender, sexuality disrupted by the androgynous, post-human, 
transcultural, “freak”

--Voices of Protest: The noisy voice in politics and as an expression of 
dissent

--Writing voices: methodology; finding a voice as a music writer; 
authorial voice developed in relationship to singing voices

--Vox Populi: fan and audience voices, reality TV singing competitions, 
new media platforms, amateur/professional divides, good and bad singing, 
listening



Proposals are due November 16. Email conference organizer Eric Weisbard 
(University of Alabama) at (Eric.Weisbard /at/ gmail.com). Individual proposals 
for 20 minute presentations should be 300 words, with a 75 word bio. For 
three person (90 minute) or four person (120 minute) panel proposals, 
include a one paragraph overview and individual statements of 300 words 
with 75 word bio. For roundtables, outline the subject in up to 500 
words, include a 75 word bio for each panelist, and specify desired 
panel length. We welcome unorthodox proposals: ask for submission 
advice. Please include emails for all participants.



The annual EMP Pop Conference, first held in 2002, mixes together 
ambitious music discourse of every kind, in an attempt to bring 
academics, critics, musicians, and dedicated fans into a collective 
conversation. This year’s program committee members are: Christine 
Bacareza Balance (University of California, Irvine); María Elena Cepeda 
(Williams College); Jasen Emmons (EMP Museum); Jack Halberstam 
(University of Southern California); journalist Jewly Hight; Mark Katz 
(University of North Carolina); Chris Molanphy (Slate), Charles Mudede 
(The Stranger), Ann Powers (NPR Music); Zandria Robinson (Rhodes 
College); and Steve Waksman (Smith College). For more, visit the Pop 
Conference page at www.EMPMuseum.org.



Shannon Wong Lerner
Ph.D. Candidate Communication Studies
Communication Studies Doctoral Candidate, Teaching Fellow, and 
Performance Coordinator
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
(swlerner /at/ email.unc.edu)



---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------