European Seminar in Ethnomusicology XVIII

Ljubljana, 19. ‒23. September 2012

The 28. European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM) will take place from 19. to 23. September 2012 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Call for Papers.

The 28. European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM) will take place from 19. to 23. September 2012 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It will be hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and the Institute of Ethnomusicology of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The topic is National Past in Music / National Musical Past - Music and Cultural Memory in post-1989 Europe. Next year’s ESEM meeting aims to approach this topic from two aspects: by exploring the ways in which current musical forms address the past events and by investigating the strategies of reshaping and renarrating the musics from the past in the dominant discourses of the present. The focus on the post-1989 national pasts is intentional: the processes of EU integration, the collapse of socialist regimes and cultural transformations in post-1989 Europe have influenced the renarrativisation of the past and the related changes in memory cultures.In this respect, music plays a significant role and is used in contemporary European memory landscapes to question, transgress and legitimize the dichotomies and hierarchies between national and transnational, ‘eastern’ and ‘western,’ public and private, collective and individual, official and unofficial.

Papers are invited addressing one or more of the following topics:
• music in commemorations, public rituals and celebrations in post-1989 Europe
• music, conflicting remembrance and traumatic past
• musical past in post-socialist transformations and processes of EU integration
• musical past and new media
• musical performance in the construction of historical past (in public realm)
• music and memory industry

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 1, 2012
Proposals including 300-word abstract, full name, affiliation and contact details (as attachment) should be submitted to:
ahofman@zrc-sazu.si
mojca.kovacic@zrc-sazu.si