[AMS-announce] CFP: Comin’ Out Swingin’: Sexualities in Improvisation, Vancouver, British Columbia, Nov. 2007

[ams-announce-admin at list.bowdoin.edu]

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 have placed the cultural politics of 
gender directly at issue, while many recorded 
works from the history of improvised music and 
jazz provoke a reconsideration of the music’s 
relationship to sexuality and identity. With an 
ear to addressing this gap, the second Creative 
Music Think Tank 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.

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 at 
interchange.ubc.ca or Dr. Julie Smith julie at coastaljazz.ca