Call for Papers

Black Lives Matter: Music, Race, and Justice
Harvard Graduate Music Forum Annual Conference
February 3–4, 2017
Matthew D. Morrison, Ph.D., keynote lecturer
Imani Uzuri, keynote/performer

This interdisciplinary music conference seeks to interrogate the place of music, musicians, and sound in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the crises to which it responds. In the midst of calls for an end to police brutality, the carceral state, and anti-Black discrimination, music studies must join the ongoing conversation interrogating understood relationships between protest, activism, and academic praxis. 

Given that representational media harbor the potential for violent and voyeuristic reproduction as well as for protest, how can we expand our understanding of music as a political tool? In an age of mass incarceration and police brutality, what are the stakes of a musical allyship that transcends mere documentation and instead establishes a sustainable basis for structural progress at the level of praxis? How can music studies redress historical biases, racial discrimination, and cultural elitism within its own ranks, and in so doing inculcate solidarity with those fighting for Black lives? What are the preconditions for a musical discourse and creative praxis grounded in principled resistance and radical change?

Open to scholars and practitioners working in and through a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives — music studies, critical race studies, history, sociology, art and art history, and public policy — this conference will agitate toward a reconceptualization of the sonic in relation to Black Lives Matter’s political imperatives. We invite abstracts for presentations of scholarly and creative work that address themes that may include, but are not limited to:

• The Black Lives Matter Movement
• Sonic Violence, Crowd Control, and Protest 
• Black Music Criticism
• Popular Music, Commercialization, and the Role of Celebrity 
• Cultural Production, Appropriation, and Racial Impersonation
• Music, Torture, and Incarceration
• Civil and Human Rights
• Canon(s), Curricula, and the Diversification of Academia

We especially welcome submissions from student-scholars from underrepresented backgrounds, as well as those based at historically Black and minority-majority institutions. We envision a capacious view of scholarship; those affiliated with not-for-profit, activist, and public organizations that challenge and redefine the role of academic research are particularly encouraged to submit.