Call for Papers: Sexualities in Improvisation

Compositions and performances in recent years by such prominent artists as Fred Hersch, Marilyn Lerner, Patricia Barber, Irene Schweizer, Maggie Nicols, Gary Burton, Pauline Oliveros, Lori Freedman, Steve Lacy and Irene Aebi, Miya Masaoka, Evan Parker, Peter Brötzmann and many others have placed the cultural politics of gender directly at issue, while many recorded works from the history of improvised music and jazz (from Valaida Snow to Cecil Taylor, from Billy Strayhorn to Andy Bey) provoke a reconsideration of the music’s relationship to sexuality and identity.

With an ear to addressing this gap, Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation invites submissions for a special issue on sexualities and improvisation, guest-edited by Julie Dawn Smith and Kevin McNeilly. Essays can range from theoretical to practical, from aesthetic to political in their aims and methods, and interdisciplinary work is both welcome and encouraged. We are especially interested in provocative, informed writing that deals with improvisation in as unlimited a sense as possible.

This special issue emerges in part from work presented at Comin’ Out Swingin’: Sexualities in Improvisation, a symposium held at the University of British Columbia in November, 2007. The editors want to include as wide a variety of material as possible, and would also welcome for consideration artist statements, commentaries, interviews and related texts. Possible themes and areas of interest for critical essays may include, but are not limited to, any of the following topics.

§       Queer Music

§       Sexing the Ear of the Other

§       Women in Contemporary Creative Music

§       Body Languages: Fingering, Tonguing, Blowing

§       Performance and Performativity

§       The Poetics of Improvisation: Speaking in Music

§       Musical Affect, the Textures of Feeling

§       The Politics of Dissonance: Fractured Identities

§       Improvising Masculinities

§       The Instrument as Prosthesis

§       Radical Subcultures: Revolting Noise

§       The History of Sexuality in/and Contemporary Creative Music

§       Transitive Genders: Playing with Our Selves

§       The Erotics of Close Listening

§       Bump and Grind: Rhythm and Corporealities

§       Mixed Media, Cyborg Songs

§       Extemporaneous Positions: Improvising Sexualities

§       Auscultation and other Apparatuses of Audience

§       Other than Music: Confronting Idioms of the Heteronormative

Essays of approximately 6000 words should conform to the journal’s guidelines for style and format. The deadline for submissions is October 1st 2008.