Journal of Festive Studies

Issue 7 Call for Papers
Joy as Resistance (Guest Editor Miguel A.Valerio)
Deadline for Abstracts: January 15, 2024

In addition to our guest-edited section described below, we always welcome submissions on a rolling basis, with no deadline for consideration. Please do think of us if your research or professional background touches on festive practices!

What is joy? Is it happiness, just an emotion, or something else? Something more? What are the possibilities of collective joy? Philosophers and scholars of affect and emotion have dealt with these and other related questions (e.g., Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: History of Collective Joy, McMahon, Happiness: A History, White, Brief History of Happiness). These thinkers and scholars, however, have mostly focused on Western cultures and thought. More recently, there has been an attempt to broaden this scope (e.g., Stearns, Happiness in World History). And critical thinkers are increasingly becoming attuned to the ways joy informs ideology and political actions, including resistance.

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Droppin’ Science: Hip Hop Ciphering and Deciphering

European HipHop Studies Network 7.0 
23-26 May 2024 (*note new dates)
Cork, Ireland    

This call for participation is open to proposals for individual papers as well as themed ciphers of 3-4 presenters.  This call is also open to proposals for arts workshops, organizing sessions, film screenings, and other practice-led formats.  The programme committee will take an affirmative approach to such arts and activist projects in order to widen access and encourage engagement from under-represented groups and alternative approaches as we call this pluriversity into being.

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“Problematic” Punk: NOFX’s Forty Years of Punk Provocations

For forty years, NOFX’s brand of (depending who you ask) witty, offensive, humorous, juvenile, intelligent, existential, political, anti-PC, and/or philosophically probing punk has reared several generations in punk attitude and ethos, for better or worse (again, depending who you ask). The band got its start in the early-1980s Los Angeles punk scene, was among the pioneers of the melodic yet hardcore So-Cal punk style, rode the wave of 1990s punk popularity without signing to a major record label, took a political turn during the Bush era, and continued their punk provocations until retiring in 2023. With fifteen studio albums and over eight million record sales, there is much to analyze about NOFX’s lyrics, musical style, business practices, image, personalities, reception, and controversial role in the punk scene.

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2nd Annual International Beatles Symposium: Celebrating A Hard Day’s Night at 60

July 5-7, 2024
Hosted by Liverpool Hope University
School of Creative and Performing Arts

The Music Team members at Liverpool Hope University are delighted to announce an interdisciplinary, international Beatles symposium that will be held on July 5-7, 2024 at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, located in the heart of Liverpool’s vibrant city centre. This academic symposium honours the 60th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ album and film, A Hard Day’s Night. As the dynamic opening chord of the title track signalled a sea change in popular culture, this moment in music history is worth further, in-depth exploration. The symposium will feature keynote addresses from leading Beatles scholars Professor Walter Everett (University of Michigan), Professor Katie Kapurch (Texas State University), and Professor Kenneth Womack (Monmouth University). Along with these presentations, there will also be a screening of A Hard Day’s Night, as well as sessions featuring other special guests.

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Pop Cultures, Fan Studies, and Creative Industries

Whether it’s fans creating friendship-bracelets to exchange at Taylor Swift concerts, dressing up in pink because of Barbie, or dancing to Anitta’s hit Envolver on TikTok, fans trying to end Britney Spears’ conservatorship… pop culture and its fandoms are thriving in today’s Creative Industries. In this special issue of the Brazilian Creative Industries Journal, we aim to explore the intersection of Pop Cultures, Fan Studies, and the Creative Industries. We invite and encourage submissions discussing recent developments linking these themes together. We are interested in papers that explore the following topics, but are not limited to them:

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Routledge Handbook of Music, Culture and Politics in Latin America

Call for Chapter Proposals
Edited by Christian Spencer-Espinosa and Laura Jordán González
Proposals due: November 23rd, 2023

In recent decades, Latin America has experienced new cycles of political and cultural crisis in which music and sound have played an important role. More and more, allegedly empowered citizens turn sound and musical genres into a means to make cultural criticism and propose new social agendas. At the same time, the transformative potential of music seems to be disavowed when considering both the commodification of political expressions by the market, and their control and co-option as forms of official culture by the state and its institutions.

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Moving Keys: Player Pianos in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America

The research concerning player pianos and reproducing pianos has grown recently. However, it is still underrepresented, given its cultural relevance. Furthermore, most works focus on Anglo-American contexts. This volume strives to make the research carried out in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America visible; there, research groups, independent researchers, and collectors have been working for a long time on these issues. We welcome contributions of scholars and collectors from within and outside academia to enrich our perspective on player pianos and reproducing pianos in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.
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RMA Study Group Music and/as Process

Call for Proposals 2024
University of Glasgow
Friday 28th – Sunday 30th June, 2024

The RMA Study Group Music and/as Process is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals as part of their eleventh annual conference, which will take place at the University of Glasgow on Friday 28th to Sunday 30th June, 2024.

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“You know how we do”: Popular Music and Communality 

The US chapter of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) announces our annual conference, April 11-14, 2024, hosted by Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

Discussions of popular music frequently center individual actors: the star, the producer, or the listener. Such narratives allow for exploration of personal expression and insight. But they can overlook the communal elements and mass appeal of popular music. As the late Howard S. Becker illustrated in his foundational work on “art worlds,” popular music is the product of a group of creators: songwriters and lyricists, studio musicians, sound engineers, promoters, dancers, and more.

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Gendering Music Matter. Power, Affects, and Infrastructures of Music Industries

14-15 March 2024, University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies

The gender gap in the music industry (understood in its broadest sense) has been evident, perceptible, measurable, and publicly discussed for many years. However, public discussions and policy initiatives on ‘gender inequality’ and ‘gender balance’ often focus on increasing the number of women and gender non-conforming professionals, leaving the patriarchal infrastructures and cultures of the music industries unchanged and unchallenged.

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