[ecrea] Call for Papers Popular Comm Special Issue: Music and Discovery

November 2014



Call for Papers



Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture

Special Issue: Music and Discovery

Co-editors: Tom McCourt and Nabeel Zuberi



The editors of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media 
and Culture invite submissions for a special issue on the topic of Music 
and Discovery. We are aiming for a multi-disciplinary issue that draws 
on the many resonances of the word ‘discovery’ in music as popular 
communication, and we welcome critical approaches in music education; 
musicology and ethnomusicology; film, television and cultural studies; 
media and communication studies; sound studies; popular music studies 
and other fields. We seek manuscripts that examine the politics and 
aesthetics of musical discovery, and how the tropes of discovery are 
invoked in disciplines, research methods and the production of knowledge 
related to music. How is ‘discovery’ represented in musical production 
and sounds, in the uses and social meaning of music?



Experimentation and changes in music making are often understood through 
the language of discovery. Musical sounds and images embody and 
represent discovery in their textuality and intertextuality, from 
citation to product placement. Digital convergence and ubiquitous music 
raise questions about the interaction of distinctive media industries 
and technologies, as well as the modes of attention and play of senses 
involved in discovery. Social media and networks offer new ways of 
finding and sharing music, as well as new recordings, repertoires and 
performances. ‘Discovery’ has long been organized in retail and leisure 
spaces; today, ‘discovery’ often appears in discussions of digital 
platforms and algorithms that introduce unfamiliar music to listeners, 
who are then tagged and tracked as consumers.



The humanities, sciences and educational institutions devoted to music 
deploy the language of discovery in their rhetoric. The collecting and 
curatorial practices of institutions and tastemakers, amateur and 
professional, introduce us to archives and genealogies that may reaffirm 
or contest dominant music histories.  Enlightenment reason, colonialism, 
imperialism and tourism continue to inform the discovery of musical 
worlds, and affect the ways in which the objects and subjects of 
discovery struggle for and negotiate agency. ‘Discovery’ mobilises 
desires and affective forces that are gendered, sexualized and 
racialized.  We welcome manuscripts on the theme of Music and Discovery 
in these areas of research, and others that we may have overlooked or 
have yet to speculate upon.



Submitted papers should be 6,000 words in length (inclusive of all 
elements). The deadline for submission is March 1, 2015. Tom McCourt 
((mccourt /at/ fordham.edu)) and Nabeel Zuberi ((n.zuberi /at/ auckland.ac.nz)) 
welcome email queries before this date.  Instructions for submitting 
your article can be found at 
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hppc20/current. Some manuscripts may not 
be sent out for review if deemed inappropriate for the journal.



Popular Communication provides a forum for scholarly investigation, 
analysis, and dialogue on communication symbols, forms, phenomena and 
systems within the context of popular culture across the globe. Popular 
Communication publishes articles on all aspects of popular 
communication, examining different media such as television, film, new 
media, games, print media, radio, music, and dance; the study of texts, 
events, artifacts, spectacles, audiences, technologies, and industries; 
and phenomena and practices, including, but not limited to, fan, youth 
and subcultures, questions of representation, digitalization, cultural 
globalization, spectator sports, sexuality, advertising, and consumer 
culture.

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