Call for Papers: Sexualities in Improvisation
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, Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation invites submissions for a special issue on sexualities and improvisation, guest-edited by Julie Dawn Smith and Kevin McNeilly. 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 writing that deals with improvisation in as unlimited a sense as possible.
This special issue emerges in part from work presented at Comin’ Out Swingin’: Sexualities in Improvisation, a symposium held at the University of British Columbia in November, 2007. The editors want to include as wide a variety of material as possible, and would also welcome for consideration artist statements, commentaries, interviews and related texts. Possible themes and areas of interest for critical essays may include, but are not limited to, any of the following topics.
Queer Music Radical Subcultures: Revolting Noise Sexing the Ear of the Other The History of Sexuality in/and Women in Contemporary Creative Contemporary Creative Music Music Transitive Genders: Playing with Our Body Languages: Fingering, Selves Tonguing, Blowing The Erotics of Close Listening Performance and Performativity Bump and Grind: Rhythm and The Poetics of Improvisation: Corporealities Speaking in Music Mixed Media, Cyborg Songs Musical Affect, the Textures of Extemporaneous Positions: Feeling Improvising Sexualities The Politics of Dissonance: Fractured Auscultation and other Apparatuses of Identities Audience Improvising Masculinities Other than Music: Confronting Idioms The Instrument as Prosthesis of the Heteronormative
Essays of approximately 6000 words should conform to the journal’s guidelines for style and format. The deadline for submissions is October 1st 2008.