Sounds and Visions: Music, Counterculture and the Global 1968

Nov 8–Dec 31, 2011 Deadline: Dec 31, 2011

Timothy Brown

Seeking contributions for a new edited volume: Sounds and Visions: Music, Counterculture and the Global 1968

Timothy S. Brown & Andrew Lison invite contributions for their new edited volume, Sounds and Visions: Music, Counterculture and the Global 1968.

Sounds and Visions: Music, Counterculture and the Global 1968 is an interdisciplinary collection of essays bringing together scholars in history, cultural studies, art history, media studies, musicol- ogy and other disciplines to consider the symbiosis of the sonic and the visual in the counterculture of the 1960s.Focusing respectively on this symbiosis from historical and theoretical perspec- tives (broadly defined), the volume aims to invigorate the dialogue between historians and critics of culture, media, and the arts around this key moment in contemporary global history.

Central to the volume is the conviction that interpretations of the “global 1968” that ignore the seminal influence of the arts—in both their popular and avant-garde iterations—are no longer ade- quate. Student activism in the space of the university and the street made up only a part of the broad anti-authoritarian conjuncture of 1968, and not necessarily the most important part; arguab- ly more fundamental was a broad democratization of the means and ways of cultural production in which not only avant-garde artists but youthful appropriators and creators of popular culture played a leading role. These cultural actors were no mere adjuncts to the student left, but protag- onists of cultural-political change in their own right, whose broadly anti-authoritarian (and in many cases explicitly anarchist) orientation hewed more closely to the ecumenical “spirit of ’68” than the dogmatic pronouncements of young Trotskyist and Maoist student sectarians.

This volume specifically examines the role of music and the visual arts in expressing the new youth sensibility of 1968. Not only did music open up new sonic vistas of emancipatory possibili- ty, but it was intimately connected to the development of the stylistic and visual codes so important to the sixties counterculture. At the same time, music—and more generally, sound—was hard- ly separable from the new visual cultures associated with the exhibitions and “happenings” staged by the avantgarde.Complementing these new forms of media, of course, were emerging philosophical and theoretical approaches, most notably those associated with the French schools of poststructuralism and film theory. These features of the cultural landscape of 1968 mark it as a significant moment in the history of multi-media and collaboration between disciplines that pre- figures today’s digital media convergence and emphasis on interdisciplinarity.We encourage scho-

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Those interested should send a 500-word chapter proposal as well as a short curriculum vitae to Timothy Brown ([email protected]) by December 30, 2011.

Contact information: Timothy Brown Northeastern University 221 Meserve Hall Boston, MA 02115 (617) 373-8316

Reference: CFP: Sounds and Visions: Music, Counterculture and the Global 1968. In: ArtHist.net, Nov 9, 2011 (accessed Sep 27, 2021), .

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