[Commlist] CFP: Gendering Music Matter. Power, Affects, and Infrastructures of Music Industries

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

*Conference: Gendering Music Matter. Power, Affects, and Infrastructures 
of Music Industries*

*14-15 March 2024, University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and 
Cultural Studies *

The gender gap in the music industry (understood in it´s broadest sense) 
has been evident, perceptible, measurable, and publicly discussed for 
many years. However, public discussions and policy initiatives on 
'gender inequality' and 'gender balance' often focus on increasing the 
number of women and gender non-conforming professionals, leaving the 
patriarchal infrastructures and cultures of the music industries 
unchanged and unchallenged.

This conference insists on the importance of shifting the analytical 
focus - at least for a moment - away from the numbers, skills, talents, 
and productions of individuals in order to look towards their 
embeddedness and orientation in gendered, social, economic, and 
historical conventions. What if we approach the music industries not as 
a blank canvas or smooth space, but as infrastructures that privilege 
certain bodies and embodied conventions while limiting others? And what 
if we try to uncover what Keller Easterling has called the "accidental, 
covert or stubborn forms of power [...] hiding in the folds of 
infrastructure space"? Or how about examining the affects, emotions, and 
reasoning of individuals including, for example, what Sara Ahmed has 
called the “affects of disorientation”, and look at how these 
experiences come to orient, position and affect people and bodies in 
different ways as they navigate the infrastructures of music industries 
around the world? Or what if we explore how agents within music 
industries tinker, remix, alter, appropriate, or hack the dominant 
infrastructure in order to forge not only new material arrangements, but 
also alternative anti-sexist ways of imagining possible futures? And 
last but not least, what can we as researchers do to support and 
facilitate initiatives and actions of change within these 
infrastructures of which we ourselves are a part?

By bringing together intersectional fields of music studies, we hope to 
bring new perspectives to questions of power, affect and the 
infrastructures of the music industries. We therefore invite a broad 
range of speakers working with, for instance, feminist musicology, 
gender studies, ethnomusicology/music anthropology, popular music 
studies, organizational anthropology, cultural-historical activity 
theory, critical race theory, affect theory, infrastructure theory, 
queer and post-phenomenology, disability studies, sound studies, 
post-structuralism, queer theory, platform studies, actor-network 
theory, science and technology studies, music history, and music pedagogy.

Potential themes might include (but are not limited to) critical 
perspectives on gender and:

  * cultures and infrastructures of music scenes
  * biases in music and cultural organizations
  * intersectionality in music research
  * music as labor/work (including union work etc.)
  * career breaks and sustainability in music work
  * pregnancy, motherhood, aging and menopause of music professionals
  * musician’s bodily changes and transitions
  * (fragile) masculinity in music life
  * music instruments and physical infrastructure
  * technology and digital infrastructures in music organization
  * the queering of musical spaces
  * separatist music communities
  * affects and feelings in music organizations
  * “anti-gender movements” and counter-initiatives against feminist and
    diversity work in music environments
  * music, memory culture and historical approaches
  * bodies on and beyond the music stage
  * the socialities of music
  * music and sustainability
  * cultural policies
  * historiographies of feminist musicology and music anthropology
  * Applied research in music life

The conference is hosted by the music anthropological research project 
Gendering Music Matter (GEMMA 
<https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/gemma/>) that examines 
the mechanisms that promote or hinder equal participation for 
professionals working with music production within the Danish popular 
music industry.

Submit an abstract of up to 250 words to Katrine Wallevik 
((xnv102 /at/ hum.ku.dk) <mailto:(xnv102 /at/ hum.ku.dk)>) or Kristine Ringsager 
((kringsager /at/ hum.ku.dk) <mailto:(kringsager /at/ hum.ku.dk)>) by 24 November 
2023. Please include:

  * Your name and a short bio
  * Your email address

Panel proposals are more than welcome - please approach us if you have a 
good idea!


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