Call for Contributions – Medieval Music and Inclusive Pedagogy

Call for Contributions
56th International Congress in Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, MI, May 13-15, 2021

The Musicology at Kalamazoo Program Committee invites contributions to the Roundtable 

Medieval Music and Inclusive Pedagogy 

Interrogating Homogeny & Exclusion in the Teaching, Scholarship, and Cultural Stewardship of Medieval Musics

Organizers: Gillian Gower, Lucia Marchi, Luisa Nardini
Chair: TBD
Respondent: Catherine Adoyo

How does “Cultural Homogeny” undergird “Cultural Hegemony” ? What role do Diversity and Inclusion initiatives play in establishing and articulating culturally cosmopolitan conceptions of intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic authority in the scholarship and teaching of medieval music?  Do “Diversity and Inclusion” initiatives truly challenge the “Homogeny and Exclusion” that constitute intrinsically unjust and axiomatically accepted systems of authority that they are implicitly intended to address?

This panel invites scholars to contribute to developing a theoretical framework for interrogating the parameters of Homogeny and Exclusion in this context.

Current events and ongoing debates about the hierarchical compartmentalization of distinct musical traditions from around the world are challenging scholars to ask new questions: to what extent does controlled assimilation into the status quo  serve to affirm the legitimacy of underlying standards of Homogeny and Exclusion. 

While primarily addressing the pedagogy of medieval music, contributions are invited to articulate the following issues also with respect to scholarship and performance:

  • What are the intellectual and cultural parameters of Homogeny in the discipline and what forms does Exclusion take?
  • Which persons, groups, and topics are excluded from the centers of authority thus defined, and why?
  • What function do the historico-temporal and genre compartmentalization of musics play in undergirding exclusivity?
  • How is the primacy of intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic authority articulated to affirm the legitimacy of Homogeny and Exclusion? In what ways might Diversity and Inclusion initiatives service this effort? How does the system function to assimilate and homogenize divergent elements?
  • What alternate paradigms of teaching and/or scholarship (including public scholarship) might deepen and expand our current approaches to education and scholarship?

Contributors are also invited to theorize and propose modes of pedagogy, public scholarship,  and/or cultural stewardship that engage the intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic authority of cultural varieties with equitable regard. To what extent might such an evolution in attitude enrich the global intellectual and cultural experience? How might such an evolution contribute to informing the foundation of individual and group conception of music’s role in the human experience and the cause of justice?

The contributions should be around 10 minutes long and may address any aspect of the questions and issues raised above in the form of case studies and/or theoretical speculations.

Please upload a 250-word proposal to the ICMS Kalamazoo conference website at the following URL: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions#papers  Be sure to choose the session “Music and Inclusive Pedagogy (A Roundtable).” Proposals not accepted to the Musicology at Kalamazoo session will be automatically forwarded to the ICMS for consideration for general sessions.

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2020. Informal inquiries and questions may be sent to the session organizers at musicology.kzoo@gmail.com.

This entry was posted in Call for Papers. Bookmark the permalink.