CALL FOR PAPERS

Allegheny Chapter

of the

American Musicological Society

Spring 2023 Meeting

Saturday, March 25th  

University of Pittsburgh, Hillman Library, Room 340

The Spring 2023 Meeting of the Allegheny Chapter of the American Musicological Society will be held on Saturday, March 25, 2023 on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh; there will be a virtual attendance and presentation option. This event will be held in conjunction with the American Musicological Society’s Many Musics of America Series.

In a tribute to Pittsburgh’s rich gospel-music history, the American Musicological Society, in partnership with the AMS Allegheny Chapter and University of Pittsburgh Library System’s Center for American Music will present a public concert exploring the music of composer, arranger, and publisher Charles Henry Pace. With his wife Frankie, Charles ran one of the nation’s earliest and most successful independent black music publishing businesses out of Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood from the mid-1930s to the 1960s. Charles’s music was distributed and performed across the nation and became an important force in Frankie’s community organizing and activism, yet much of it has been inaccessible to performers for decades, surviving only on the printing plates and negative photographs that Charles used to publish his music. The Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh Library System is where the Pace archive is housed.

In conjunction with the concert, on the same day the University of Pittsburgh Library System will host the AMS Allegheny Chapter’s spring meeting, with a keynote lecture featuring Mark Burford. Mark Burford is R.P. Wollenberg Professor of Music at Reed College. His research and teaching focuses on late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German concert music and twentieth-century popular music in the United States, with particular focus on African American music after World War II. His scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Musicology, 19th-Century Music, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Current Musicology, Musical Quarterly, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and other edited collections. His article “Sam Cooke as Pop Album Artist—A Reinvention in Three Songs” received the Society for American Music’s 2012 Irving Lowens Award for the outstanding article on American music. His book Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field (Oxford, 2019) received multiple prizes, including the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society for the outstanding book in musicology by a senior scholar. He is the editor of The Mahalia Jackson Reader (2020), an anthology of writings on Jackson for Oxford’s Readers on American Musicians series.

Presenters are invited to submit a proposal for individual papers, video presentations lecture-recitals, seminar panels, or other presentation formats on any subject of musicological interest. While this is an open call for papers, we are especially interested in submissions related to gospel music.

An abstract of max. 350 words for all proposal types, along with the proposed title and the presenter’s preferred mode of presentation (in-person or virtual) should be submitted by Saturday, February 25th.  Please identify proposal type in submission.

We encourage proposal submissions for a number of scholarly presentation formats. In accordance with AMS policies, please follow these guidelines:

  1. Individual papers should be no longer than 20 minutes with 10 minutes of discussion.
  2. “Lightning” sessions consist of individual 8-10 minute talks with additional discussion or media. Entire session will fill a one-hour slot.
  3. Video presentation abstracts should include information on the goals and format of the presentation. Additional guidelines will be distributed with acceptance.
  4. Seminar panels will distribute written papers ahead of the conference and include extended discussion of the topic. See AMS Seminar FAQ for additional information on proposing a topic and why to choose this format: https://www.amsmusicology.org/page/MinneapolisSeminarFAQ
  5. Additional formats (virtual workshops, roundtables, lecture-recitals) should fill an hour and 20-minute slot. Please identify session format, viability for virtual presentation/participation, musicological significance, and participant roles in the abstract.

Please submit abstracts for both individual proposals and alternative sessions to: jennifer.walker2@mail.wvu.edu

All submissions will be evaluated by a blind peer-review process, and those from a committee member’s immediate colleagues or students will not be forwarded by the chair to that member.

Jennifer Walker

Program Committee Chair

Assistant Professor of Musicology

West Virginia University

jennifer.walker2@mail.wvu.edu