ReSounding Loss: Music, Grief, and Culture

Call for Chapter Proposals

Grief is an emotional response that arises in the wake of a significant loss. While it is often thought of as an individual experience, it can be collectively experienced as well. Grief is closely associated with the death of a person, but it can result from any significant loss, including, for example, the loss of a relationship, a homeland, or a dream for the future. In light of the many losses and potential losses currently facing humanity – from war to climate change, and from extremist politics to mass casualties – a discussion of grief feels both timely and urgent.

While grief is a universal human experience, expressions of grief vary by culture. Music is often interwoven with grief, and it may serve, for example, to express or process grief. Musical practices at times of loss and grief can also tell us much about cultural beliefs, values, ethics, and ideologies. However, grief literature is overwhelmingly produced from within the “psy-” disciplines, focusing on the psychological experience of grief, on the individual over the social, and on grief within the Global North. Therefore, we invite proposals for book chapters on music and grief, welcoming contributions from diverse disciplines with particular attention to the social and the cultural, as well as varied approaches to the study of cultures of music and grief.

Themes that might be addressed (all should be considered in terms of their relationships with music)

• Grieving a loss (with “loss” defined broadly)
• Gendered expressions of grief
• Disenfranchised and/or vicarious grief
• The relationship between grief and trauma or grief vs. trauma
• Grief and religion and/or grief rituals
• Representations of grief
• Socio-cultural characteristics of grief, its representation, or its response
• Decolonial approaches to grief
• Memory, remembering, and/or memorialization
• Methods and methodologies for researching music and grief

Proposals should include a title, proposal (350 words max), author name, and affiliation by September 30, 2024. Please also include a 200-word biography. Send proposals to [email protected]. The co-editors, Drs. Heather Sparling (Cape Breton University) and Andrea Shaheen Espinosa (Arizona State University), will inform authors of accepted abstracts by October 31. Full chapters are due April 1, 2025.