Psychoanalysis is becoming more prevalent in studies on music and musicians over the past thirty years. At least within contemporary Anglophone scholarship, researchers have applied the critical theories of Freud and Lacan to a wide range of topics from semiotics to embodied performativity for a better understanding of musical aesthetics and epistemology. From David Schwarz’s socio-political analyses of German and American classics to Richard Middleton’s rigorous method of working through the history of the Anglo-American popular song, psychoanalysis has been established as a method de rigueur for the twenty-first-century music and humanities scholar.
With the rise in popularity and curiosity of psychoanalytic theories, including those by Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Badiou, and Žižek, in Musicology and related studies, we are organising a Study Day to celebrate the diversity of international scholarship within this inter-discipline. We are honoured to have Prof. David Bard-Schwarz (author of Listening Subjects and Listening Awry) as keynote speaker and would like to invite papers addressing these or other topics of interest:
Music History and Analysis | Techniques of Composition | Music Ethnography |
Performance Practice | Opera or Musical Theatre | Popular music or Film music |
Traditional music or New music | Gender, Sexuality, Class, Race or Language |
Technologies and Digitalization | Music and Philosophy, Psychology or Politics |
We welcome abstracts of up to 250 words for (i) 20-minute papers with 10 minutes of questions and answers, (ii) short lecture-recital, or (iii) poster presentations. We also invite proposals for 90-minute panels of other presentation formats. Submissions including the presenter’s name, email address and institutional affiliation (if any) should be emailed to the Study Day co-ordinator at <powjunkai@gmail.com> by Saturday 13 July 2013.
Committee members: J. P. E. Harper-Scott (Royal Holloway, London), Freya Jarman (Liverpool), Kenneth Smith (Liverpool) and Jun Zubillaga-Pow (King’s College, London)
The Study Day is made possible by generous support from the University of Liverpool, the Royal Musical Association and the Society for Music Analysis. Prospective publication projects will be considered during the Study Day itself.
Music & Psychoanalysis 