General Call for Proposals
The 87th Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) will be held online on 11-12 & 20-21 November 2021.
The Annual Meeting promotes the study and teaching of music. It builds community and supports scholars through a range of approaches and presentational modes, including historical musicology, creative practice, ethnography, analysis, performance, musical demonstrations, policy, civic engagement, sound artifact curation, and digital humanities. The 2021 call for proposals and the program committee procedures are designed to reflect changes in the society's scholarly and demographic profile and aim to encourage new modes of sharing ideas.
Guided by the Society's Statement on Fair Practice and Representation, the program committee seeks to create a positive working, learning, and social environment in which a diverse Society may develop and flourish. Issues of fairness and representation will be an integral part of the process of creating the program.
At the Annual Meeting, the society invites presenters to share work and ideas in the six formats listed below. A successful proposal articulates the main points of the presentation clearly, positions its contributions in the context of previous work, and suggests its significance for the Society's membership. Session organizers are advised to convene a diverse panel. (All presenters at the AMS Annual Meeting must register for the AMS Annual Meeting.)
Interested individuals are invited to submit the following types of proposals:
• Session Proposals. The program committee strongly encourages potential participants to collaborate on proposals for 90-minute sessions of three papers. Each paper is 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Session organizers are responsible for submitting a summary session abstract as well as individual paper abstracts. Organizers must also indicate a session chair and may identify a respondent if appropriate.
• Individual Proposals. The program committee invites individual paper proposals. Papers will be 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for discussion. The program committee will compile these individual papers into topically-based three-paper sessions.
• Workshops. The program committee encourages workshops whose formats include but are not limited to sessions combining performance and scholarship; collections of short position papers; and discussions of publications or creative works. Educators, artists, and curators, for example, may lead interactive workshops to emphasize challenges and possibilities of music scholarship, performance, and activism. Proposals should list participants and outline the session format.
• Roundtables. The program committee welcomes roundtable proposals that provide a space for participants to engage in dialogue with each other and the audience. Roundtables might include forums with scholars, community activists, artists, public officials; conversations among performing artists, curators, and educators about aesthetic and expressive innovations or the challenges of developing public cultures in diverse communities.
• Poster Presentations. Proposals for poster presentations should follow the guidelines for the submission of individual proposals but also include an explanation of the content and goals of the graphic presentation. Guidelines for posters will be distributed with acceptance information.
• Films. This category offers space for presenters to display a recently completed or in-progress film or video. A session of up to 120 minutes should include time for an introduction and discussion. Submit title, subject, and information on the introduction/discussion. Indicate the length of both the film/video and the introduction/discussion.
All proposal abstracts must be 350 words or less.
Program Committee Procedures
The selection of abstracts and creation of the annual meeting program will be done by the AMS Program Committee. To support the Program Committee's work and ensure the widest possible participation, all proposals will be read by an external pool of reviewers made up of AMS members holding PhDs in musicology or a related field. To serve as an annual meeting reviewer, one must be an AMS member. The call for members to volunteer to serve as reviewers will go out in late December. Those submitting proposals to the Program Committee are not eligible to serve as annual meeting reviewers.
Application Restrictions
No one may appear on the program more than twice (Committee and Study Group sessions are excluded from this rule). An individual may participate in any of the presentation formats listed above and appear one other time on the program as a chair of a session or as a respondent. Those submitting a proposal as part of a multi-paper session may not submit another proposal.
The Alternate Years Rule
Those who participated in any of the six presentation formats at the 2020 AMS meeting may not submit proposals for the 2021 meeting.
Submission Procedure
Proposals must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST, 16 February 2021. Proposals are to be submitted electronically. A link to the proposal submission site will be provided on the AMS website and this 2021 conference site.
Please note that proposal submission ceases precisely at the deadline. To avoid technical problems with submission please submit at least twenty-four hours before the deadline. Proposals received after the deadline cannot be considered.
Notifications of the Program Committee's decisions will be sent in mid- to late May. Sessions organized by such groups as AMS committees, Study Groups, and affiliated societies are not reviewed by the Program Committee.