Call: "Comin' Out Swingin': Sexualities in Improvisation" interdisciplinary symposium seeks writers and artists

> Hi all,
>
> Our friends and colleagues at UBC are holding an
> interdisciplinary symposium on contemporary improvised musics in
> Vancouver on November 16 & 17, 2007 titled "Comin' Out Swingin':
> Sexualities in Improvisation".
>
> Please find attached and below the call for papers for the
> symposium, an exciting opportunity for engaging in dialogue
> around improvisational music, gender, and sexuality.
>
> Gregory Fenton
> Managing Editor
> Critical Studies in Improvisation/ Études critiques en
> improvisation
> 519-824-4120 Ext 56547
>
> CALL FOR PAPERS
>
> Comin’ Out Swingin’: Sexualities in Improvisation
> A Symposium
> Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
> November 16 & 17 2007
>
> Improvised and Creative New Musics have been on the upswing in
> recent years, but listeners, critics and scholars have said
> little, so far, about the relationships of the various forms and
> practices of improvisation to gender and sexuality. Compositions
> and performances in recent years by such prominent artists as
> Fred Hersch, Marilyn Lerner, Patricia Barber, Irene Schweizer,
> Maggie Nicols, Gary Burton, Pauline Oliveros, Lori Freedman,
> Steve Lacy and Irene Aebi, Miya Masaoka, Evan Parker, Peter
> Brötzmann and many others have placed the cultural politics of
> gender directly at issue, while many recorded works from the
> history of improvised music and jazz (from Valaida Snow to Cecil
> Taylor, from Billy Strayhorn to Andy Bey) provoke a
> reconsideration of the music’s relationship to sexuality and
> identity.
>
> With an ear to addressing this gap, th e second Creative Music
> Think Tank presented by Coastal Jazz and Blues Society in
> conjunction with St. John’s College and the Department of
> English at the University of British Columbia) invites proposals
> for critical and scholarly conference papers on gender,
> sexuality and improvisation. Essays can range from theoretical
> to practical, from aesthetic to political in their aims and
> methods, and interdisciplinary work is both welcome and
> encouraged. We are especially interested in provocative,
> informed work that deals with improvisation in as unlimited a
> sense as possible. Submissions are invited from both academic
> and non-academic writers and critics.
>
> The symposium will be held in Vancouver from November 16 & 17,
> 2007, and will be coordinated with a set of evening concerts.
> Selected papers from the conference will be published in a
> special issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation,
> http://www.criticalimprov.com/public/csi/index.html. Possible
> themes and areas of interest for conference presentations may
> include, but are not limited to, any of the following topics:
>
>
> Queer Music
> Sexing the Ear of the Other
> Women in Contemporary Creative Music
> Body Languages: Fingering, Tonguing, Blowing
> Performance and Performativity
> The Poetics of Improvisation: Speaking in Music
> Musical Affect, the Textures of Feeling
> The Politics of Dissonance: Fractured Identities
> Improvising Masculinities
> The Instrument as Prosthesis
> Radical Subcultures: Revolting Noise
> The History of Sexuality in/and Contemporary Creative Music
> Transitive Genders: Playing with Our Selves
> The Erotics of Close Listening
> Bump and Grind: Rhythm and Corporealities
> Mixed Media, Cyborg Songs
> Extemporaneous Positions: Improvising Sexualities
> Auscultation and other Apparatuses of Audience
> Other than Music: Confronting Idioms of the Heteronormative
>
>
>
> Please submit conference-paper proposals of no more than 500
> words — finished papers should conform to a 20-minute delivery —
> by July 15, 2007 to Dr. Kevin McNeilly
> mcneilly@interchange.ubc.ca or Dr. Julie Smith
> julie@coastaljazz.ca
>
>
> k_and_e_99@yahoo.com
>
>