CfP Sonic Doom: Decay, Disease, and Destruction in Music

From the Requiem Mass to death metal, from mourning to torture, music has long been used as a means of evoking, communicating, and sometimes creating decay, disease, and destruction. Music can represent otherwise inexpressible states of sublimity and pain, and can function as a means of representing, mediating, and understanding violence and loss.
We invite you to join us in opening new dialogues on the darker side of musical and sonic culture. The many possible avenues of inquiry include, but are not limited to, investigations of violence, death, and disease in music, the destructive or restorative possibilities of sound, the effects of music and sound on the body, and questions of decadence and decay.
"Echo: a music-centered journal" is pleased to announce its fifth annual conference, "Sonic Doom: Decay, Disease, and Destruction in Music," to be held at UCLA on May 13-14. James Deaville (Carleton University) and Mitchell Morris (University of California, Los Angeles) will give the keynote addresses. Scholars from all disciplinary and methodological backgrounds are invited to submit proposals for papers on this theme. We also welcome proposals for presentations that deviate from the standard paper format, including performances, lecture recitals, multimedia work, etc.
Presentations will each be twenty minutes long (around 2400 words), followed by ten minutes for discussion.Individual presenters should submit an abstract of 300 words or less, and should also include: 1) the paper or presentation title; 2) the author's name and a brief biography (50-100 words); 3) institutional affiliation and contact information; 4) audio-visual requirements. Proposals for pre-arranged panels of two or three papers are also welcome (although individual papers from panel submissions might be selected separately). Panel proposals should include all of the above requirements for each member of the panel, as well as a separate, more general description of the panel's overall theme (200-250 words).
Submissions must be received by March 1, 2011 and may be sent electronically to echoconf at ucla.edu. For submission details see: http://www.echo.ucla.edu/Volume9-Issue1/conference11.html.