The Harvard Graduate Music Forum is pleased to announce that we are accepting abstracts for our 2018 symposium "Ex-centric Music Studies." The conference will explore subjects, methods, and modes of presentation that have been deemed ‘peripheral’ to music studies, and aims to offer participants an opportunity to present projects that might exceed the bounds of academic convention.

Scholarship in academia is grounded upon a common history of methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and discourses, that while facilitating critical inquiry, can also project limitations on new modes of knowledge production. In the spirit of creating space for new meanings to emerge, we ask: How can different methodologies and epistemologies transcend the strictures of institutionalized scholarly production? How might alternative modes of presentation foster new ways of thinking? How can music studies reframe the relationship of theory and practice? What can be done to redress the relationship between academia and wider society?

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Alternative music epistemologies, methodologies, pedagogies, objects of inquiry

• Music studies outside the academy

• Ex-centric cross-disciplinary research

• Multimedia and new media presentation modes (i.e., sonification, video, interactive media)

• Alternative prose formats (scholarship as autobiography, fiction, scholarship as journalism, and as personal voice)

• Embedded knowledge in musical practice (music composition, instrument-making, performance)

Submission Guidelines

The program committee encourages a diversity of perspectives, and invites contributions from all involved in music studies (musicologists, ethnomusicologists, theorists, composers, performers, and interdisciplinary scholars). Equal time will be allotted for presentation and discussion, and the program committee encourages the submission of work in progress. A variety of presentation modes are encouraged and include but are not limited to:

1. Papers Presentation

2. Performance-Presentation

3. Presentation of video and documentary formats

4. Alternative Prose Formats [as above]

Abstract Guidelines

Submissions for conference-style papers should consist of a title and abstract of around 350 words. Those delivering papers should plan to do so in 20 minutes, and additional time will be allocated for questions and discussion. If you wish to submit diagrams, figures, or media alongside your abstract you are encouraged to do so, bearing in mind that attachments should be of manageable size for the purposes of dissemination during the abstract review process.

Abstracts of composers, performers, videographers and others that wants to exceed the boundaries of traditional papers should include a description of the creative work/presentation, its relevance for the conference theme, technological/location requirements, and are encouraged to submit accompanying scores, and/or recordings.

Please include in your submission your name and institutional or organizational affiliation, if any.

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Email submissions to: gmf.conference18@gmail.com

The deadline for submissions is Thursday, November 30, 2017, at 11:59pm EST.

This conference is made possible by the generous support of the Department of Music at Harvard University