An extensive festival showcasing and debating the interface of contemporary
music and gender concerns will be taking place in Cologne, Germany from
June 13 to 15, 2008. This 3-day festival of concerts, exhibitions, multi
media installations and talks in the city will be dedicated to questions of
how gender and contemporary music interact. Among the participating
institutions are the Hochschule für Musik, Kunsthochschule für Medien,
Universität zu Köln, Museum für angewandte Kunst, Oper Köln, WDR und
Deutschlandfunk.

Part of this event will be an interdisciplinary workshop at the University
of Cologne (organized by Prof. Dr. Beate Neumeier) on the cultural
implications and intersections of music and gender. Contributions may cover
a wide range of concerns from questions of gender and music production as
well as reception, to aspects of gender and intermediality, to
intersections of music theory with gender theory (see below). The results
of this workshop will be published in a special subsequent issue of gender
forum(http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/).

Papers and presentations are welcome on any of the following aspects. (This
is only an indicative list.):

GENDERED MUSICAL PRODUCTION AND RECEPTION
1) Gender and Genre Traditions
- Why do certain musical genres seem to be more gender exclusive than others?
- Genre/Gender Crossovers: How are genres differently
appropriated/subverted regarding the gender of the musician/listener?
- Gendered Recitations and Variations of Patterns?
- Traditional Genres and Gender (De-)Construction: American Blues, German
Krautrock, French Chanson, Chinese Opera, Tribal Dances, etc.
- Subversive Voices in the Opera: counter tenors and breeches parts
- Gender, Genre and Sexuality: The relation of musical genres and sexual
practices?

2) Gender and Product /Production
- Artists: gender reiteration and gender bending
- Producers, Composers, Managers, Performers: self expression vs.
manufacturing. Questions of power
- Labels: Sexism and Homophobia in the Music Industry- Women labels, Queer
labels
- New Media: The music industry and youtube/ myspace. Have changes in the
modes of production/distribution/representation positively affected the
possibility of diversity?
- Ritual and Performance as Gender Reiteration?

3) Gendered Reception of Music
- Music as Site of Cultural Heritage, Resistance, Postcolonial Expression,
Intercultural Influence)
- Mass Hysteria: boy and girl bands and their shaping of youth culture
- Gender and Social/National Status: from “low” to “high”, from Black to
White, from West to East
- Classical Music as (Gendered) Education?

INTERMEDIALITY AND GENDER IDENTITY: MUSIC; GENDER AND MODES OF REPRESENTATION
1) Hybrid Productions
- Drama: Drama as Opera (e.g. Macbeth, Hamlet, Salome etc.),
- Music as modus operandi in Plays (e.g. Helen Cooper, Tom Stoppard)
- Gender of/in Poetry, Sonnets, Lyrics
- Pop-Prose (e.g. Beat Generation, Bret Easton Ellis, Sibylle Berg, Nick
Hornby, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Thomas Meinecke, Alexa Hennig von
Lange, Hanif Kureishi)
- Musical as Coming-of-Gender Stories/Songs (e.g. My Fair Lady, Funny Girl,
Billy Elliot, West Side Story, Bollywood- Productions)

2) Audiovisual Culture
- Music in Film: Gendering characters and movies? Irony? Title songs?
- Music Videos: performing subjects/objects of desire overt sexism and
homophobia in hip hop, ragga and heavy metal
- gender playfulness (e.g. Madonna/Marilyn Manson/Scissor Sisters/Mika, etc.)

3) Distribution and Commodification
- Casting Shows
- VJ/DJ(ane) Cultures
- Mobile Ring Tones
- Commercials

MUSIC THEORY AND GENDER
1) Traditions of Music Theory
- Systematic vs Music Ethnology: levels of music discussed - from
mathematical/neurobiological to cultural heritage

2) Possible Intersections of Music Theory with Gender Theory
- Semiology
- Saussurean Reading
- Diachronical Reading
- Discourse Analysis

Please send your proposals in English or German (200-300 words) by December
15, 2007 to gender forum: gender-forum_at_uni-koeln.de

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Received on Tue Oct 02 2007 - 20:33:14 EDT