Deadline for proposals: January 31, 2008

In June 2008, a festival for contemporary music will be held in the City of Cologne, supported by the Cultural Affairs Office of the City of Cologne, the Opera of Cologne, the Music School, the School for the Arts and Media, the School for Design, the TV Station (WDR), and the Radio Station (Deutschlandfunk). This three-day festival of concerts, exhibitions, multimedia installations and talks will be dedicated to questions of how gender and music interact.

Part of this event will be an intersquareiplinary workshop at the University of Cologne (organized by Prof. Dr. Beate Neumeier) on the cultural implications and intersections of music and gender. Contributions are invited that cover a wide range of concerns from questions of gender and music production as well as reception, to aspects of gender and intermediality, to intersections of music theory with gender theory (see below). The results of this workshop will be published in a special subsequent issue of gender forum (http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/).

Papers and presentations are welcome on any of the following aspects (this is only an indicative list):

I. Gendered Musical Production and Reception
1. Gender and Genre Traditions

* Why do certain musical genres seem to be more gender exclusive than others?
* Genre/Gender Crossovers: How are genres differently appropriated/subverted regarding the gender of the musician/listener?
* Gendered Recitations and Variations of Patterns
* Traditional Genres and Gender (De-)Construction: American Blues, German Krautrock, French Chanson, Chinese Opera, Tribal Dances, etc.
* Subversive Voices in the Opera: counter tenors and breeches parts
* Gender, Genre and Sexuality: The relation of musical genres and sexual practices?

2. Gender and Product/Production
* Artists: gender reiteration and gender bending
* Producers, Composers, Managers, Performers: self expression vs. manufacturing, questions of power
* Labels: Sexism and Homophobia in the Music Industry --- Women labels, Queer labels
* New Media: The music industry and youtube/myspace. Have changes in the modes of production/distribution/representation positively affected the possibility of diversity?
* Ritual and Performance as Gender Reiteration?

3. Gendered Reception of Music

* Music as Site of Cultural Heritage, Resistance, Postcolonial Expression, Intercultural Influence
* Mass Hysteria: boy and girl bands and their shaping of youth culture
* Gender and Social/National Status: from "low" to "high", from Black to White, from West to East
* Classical Music as (Gendered) Education?

II. Intermediality and Gender Identity: Music, Gender and Modes of Representation

1. Hybrid Productions
* Drama: Drama as Opera (e.g. Macbeth, Hamlet, Salome etc.),
* Music as modus operandi in Plays (e.g. Helen Cooper, Tom Stoppard)
* Gender of/in Poetry, Sonnets, Lyrics
* Pop-Prose (e.g. Beat Generation, Bret Easton Ellis, Sibylle Berg, Nick Hornby, Thomas Meinecke, Alexa Hennig von Lange, Hanif Kureishi)
* Musical as Coming-of-Gender Stories/Songs (e.g. My Fair Lady, Funny Girl, Billy Elliot, West Side Story, Bollywood- Productions)

2. Audiovisual Culture

* Music in Film: Gendering characters and movies? Irony? Title songs?
* Music Videos: performing subjects/objects of desire, overt sexism and homophobia in hip hop, ragga and heavy metal, gender playfulness (e.g. Madonna/Marilyn Manson/Scissor Sisters/Mika, etc.)

3. Distribution and Commodification

* Casting Shows
* VJ/DJ(ane) Cultures
* Mobile Ring Tones
* Commercials

III. Music Theory and Gender

1. Traditions of Music Theory
* Systematic Music theory, Music Ethnology, History of music: levels of music discussed --- from mathematical/neurobiological to cultural heritage;
* Gendering of academic traditions

2. Possible Intersections of Music Theory with Gender Theory

* Semiology, (Post)Structuralism
* Discourse Analysis
* (De)Constructivism, Theories of Cognition

Please send your proposals in English or German (200-300 words) by January 31st, 2008 to gender forum (gender-forum@uni-koeln.de.