Extended Deadline: Frauds & Fakes in Words and Music (University of Richmond, Virginia, May 29–31, 2025)
The upcoming deadline for the next conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies has been extended UNTIL JANUARY 15th! See full CfP here: https://www.wordandmusicstudies.org/_files/ugd/5dbb84_21bf80d26ca74a839d19725255461956.pdf Call for papersFrauds & Fakes in Words and MusicUniversity of Richmond, Virginia, May 29–31, 2025 With the proliferation of fake news, synthetic video, and AI-powered chatbots and compositions,deceptive material is all around us. Philosophers like Nick Bostrom have even argued that the world,and everything in it, could actually be a computer simulation. But if technology has made itincreasingly difficult to distinguish reality from its imitators, fakes were also with us long before thecomputer age. One of the most notorious literary fakes – the epic poems attributed to Ossian butwritten by James Macpherson – became a catalyst for artistic creation in the Romantic era, leading toconcert overtures by Felix Mendelssohn and Niels Gade, songs by Franz Schubert, and novels byGoethe and Walter Scott. These earnest misreadings show the extent to which frauds are enmeshed inmusical and literary histories. Spectacles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from phantasmagorias and magic shows tooperas and amusement parks, similarly straddled the line between deceptive and illusory experiences.Entertainers perceived to be on the wrong side could be derided as humbugs who willfully defraudedspectators, even though they were paid to simulate a heightened or impossible form of reality. Today,technologies like virtual reality networks promise to amplify embodied experiences online, raisingquestions about whether simulations of reality might be perceived as real, fake, or something inbetween. These experiences raise questions about how (or whether) illusions differ from frauds andfakes, which in some cases seem ill-intentioned or motivated by bad actors. We welcome papers on these and related themes, including songs co-opted (and sometimes contested)in the political arena, AI’s absorption of word-and-music source material, questions of copyright oradaptation and the gifts and pitfalls of digital translation. In addition to exploring the “magic mirrors”of spectacle and screen, we aim to discuss power relations in claims of artistic authenticity and the usesof language and sound for ideological sway. The conference will build on existing scholarship on theborrowings, misreadings, and manipulations that have both inspired and plagued creative artists, inorder to bring added relevance to word and music studies today. Possible topics include but are not limited to:• Music, propaganda and conspiracy (“fake news”)• A.I.-powered music• Copyright and appropriation• Translation and adaptation• Mash-ups and remixes• Mockumentaries and mockbusters• Musical notation and transcription• Online personas in music-splaining (TikTok, etc.)• Musical illusions and phantasmagorias Presenters may choose to deliver either a twenty-minute paper or participate in a poster session.(Research in progress may be well suited for the poster session.) Please submit abstracts of up to 250words by January 15, 2025, to wma2025richmond@gmail.com. Program committee:Delia da Sousa Correa (Open University)Jessie Fillerup (University of Richmond)Thomas Gurke (University of Minnesota )Heidi Hart (Linnaeus University, independent scholar)