The organizers call for papers and/or panel sessions. More information via Dr Anna Papaeti (soundscapes2019@gmail.com) or info@simm-platform.eu.

Titled Soundscapes of Trauma, this two-day interdisciplinary conference explores negative and positive uses of music and sound in detention, incarceration, and warfare. Music has been intrinsically linked with repression, punishment, and warfare, as well as therapy and survival in situations of detention, war, and conflict zones. Music torture and sonic weapons are only a few examples that are by no means limited to contemporary times. At the same time, there is a growing scholarship on the beneficial effects of music in war and/or detention (such as prisons, refugee camps, immigration centres), showing how it can bridge ethnic or social differences, encouraging community building.

This conference encompasses a broad range of historical periods to contemporary times. Case studies, histories, testimonies, and a wide scope of theoretical and methodological approaches are invited. Exploration of medical and legal aspects with regard to human rights violations are also welcome, as are papers that focus on the traumatization of subjectivity, the challenges of survivor testimony, and memorialization of trauma.

The conference is interdisciplinary, welcoming papers from across disciplines including musicology, ethnomusicology, history, trauma studies, social anthropology, medical humanities, human rights and international law, and psychoanalysis. Practitioners, human rights organizations and activists are invited to submit proposals, as the conference emphasizes the pressing need for inter-sectoral dialogue between academics, researchers, and practitioners working with survivors or detainees in prisons, refugee camps, and immigration centres, among others.

Topics may include:

• Sound, music, war, and conflict
• Soundscapes of detention
• Music and ‘re-education’
• Music, torture, justice 
• Music, sound, and human rights
• Sound, trauma, memorialization
• Music, traumatic memory, testimony
• Music in prisons
• Music in refugee camps
• Music programmes in sites of detention
• Music therapy for trauma survivors

The conference language will be English. Proposals for 20-minute individual papers should be submitted in the form of a 250-word abstract accompanied by a 100-word biographical note, contact information, and details of professional affiliation; independent scholars are welcome to submit. Proposals for panel sessions should include a 300-word statement explaining the panel’s rationale as well as abstracts of each paper and biographical notes of speakers.

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to Dr Anna Papaeti at: soundscapes2019@gmail.com by Friday, 21 September 2018. Acceptance notifications will be sent by Friday, 2 November 2018.

Call for papers pdf

More information here