[AMS-announce] CFP: Louis Armstrong Symposium, College of Staten Island/CUNY, Nov 2009

[Announcements for the AMS]

The College of Staten Island and the CUNY Research Foundation
The Louis Armstrong Symposium
Saturday 21 November 2009

The central goal of The Louis Armstrong Symposium is to stimulate scholarship about Louis Armstrong’s life and professional career.  Of special interest will be research that considers Armstrong’s contributions as musician, improviser, and performer in relation to the people of his time, including musicians, audiences, and critics, as well as to those who came before and after him.  The resulting scholarship will fill an important gap in our understanding of Armstrong’s relationship to the stylistic changes that music experienced, and the cultural changes that transformed American society, during his lifetime. The Louis Armstrong Symposium will give scholars a forum for coming together to share their reflections on this remarkable man’s personal and professional legacy.

We welcome abstracts of 250 words on any topic related to Armstrong’s work and/or his life.  Each presenter will have 30 minutes in which to set forth his or her ideas.  An extended question & answer/discussion period will follow the presentations in each session.  Kindly e-mail your abstract as an attachment to the conference administrator by 21 August 2009 (see details below). With the abstract, include a short list of sources and recordings that you will draw from during your presentation.  In the body of the e-mail, please include your name, contact information, and institutional affiliation (if any).  

Dan Morgenstern, Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Newark will deliver the Keynote Address. Mr. Morgenstern is a noted jazz historian, former editor of Down Beat, and author of Jazz People, whose collected writings appeared in Living With Jazz:A Reader, edited by Sheldon Meyer.  He has won seven Grammy Awards for his album notes. The National Endowment for the Arts named Dan Morgenstern an NEA Jazz Master in 2007.  He has taught jazz history at Brooklyn College, New York University, the Peabody Institute, and Rutgers.

Timeline: 

21 August: Abstract deadline
9 September: Notification of acceptance
21 September: Pre-registration deadline

The event will take place at The College of Staten Island/CUNY, 2800 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, NY 10314.  For more information, contact Linda Soria at TheArmstrongSymposium at gmail.com.