cfp.english.upenn.edu

Mapping Between Bodies and Sounds

The seminar organizers invite abstracts (250 words) for a proposed panel at ACLA, to be held in Toronto April 4-7, 2013. The conference theme is “Global Positioning Systems.”

This seminar will address where philosophy, literature and music intersect, and how thinkers, writers and performers—drawing from early modern and materialist understandings of mathematics, music and anatomy to recent theories of cognition, perception, and the digital—have located this intersection in the body. We are in turn interested in how bodies in space, as producers, negotiators and vessels of sound, are themselves mapped by sound and music.

In exploring different understandings of mapping music and sound in the body and mapping bodies through and according to music, we encourage participants to examine where the text (literary, philosophical, musical, or digital) fits in this dialectical relationship in which music and bodies take turns mapping and being mapped.

Possible lines of inquiry include:
Where do literature and philosophy position music in the body?
How are bodies mapped through music (dance theories, choreography)?
How does a performing body map sound?
What is the relationship between corporeal sound mapping and epistemology?
— Does such sound mapping become outdated?
How do texts (philosophical, literary, musical or digital) represent or contribute to sound’s provocation or management of the body?
What is at stake in the corporealization or textualization of musical production and performance?

The deadline for submission is November 1, 2013. Please include a brief bio at the end of your abstract and submit as word or PDF directly to the panel organizers at rachel.corkle@nyu.edu and napolinj@newschool.edu .