We are currently calling for papers for the upcoming issue of the Werkstatt Geschichte, ‘Lied und Leid’: Musical Histories of Suffering, Defiance and Healing. This issue will explore one fundamental association: the song and narratives of agony and pain. The aim here is twofold: first, offering a musicians’ account of suffering by carrying out a historical survey of emotions, a major concern will be trespassing the commonly presumed dichotomies between personal vs. collective, emotional vs. political and hegemonic vs. subaltern. Second, the contributors will help reevaluate the limits and shortcomings of conventional fields, methods and theories of social studies of trauma, victimhood, resistance and healing from an point of view. Within this conceptual framework particularly crucial is to seek to explore how musical sources can be included and made useful for the analysis of social processes.
For long music has stood at the very margins of the social/cultural theory. Only in the recent two decades that the analytical potentials of the song and the tune as historical narratives began to attract scholarly interest. First and foremost, music is the archive of emotions; emotions that have been generated, shaped and transformed at the intersection of social hierarchies, political struggles and creative personal interventions. Mirroring the affective aesthetics, socio-economic grounds and political contours of antagonisms the song negates claims for truism; instead, it defines a minefield of cultural contestations, vying interests and competing desires. Hence, bringing music (back) in, both as a historical archive and as a subject of research opens new conceptual horizons, and raises major historiographical and methodological challenges at once.
This call is open to all fields of humanities and social research.
We specifially seek contributions from research on premodern periods. Yet more contributions from other periods are welcomed as well (more information about the journal at https://werkstattgeschichte.de/ueber-uns/profil/). The issue is scheduled for publication in the spring of 2023.
We invite you to send us an abstract of 3000-5000 characters, as well as a short note about yourself to the following addresses:
katja.jana[at]posteo.de
We invite potential contributors to electronically send an abstract (3000-5000 characters) as well as a short note about yourself to katja.jana[at]posteo.de latest by May 31, 2021. Applicants will be notified by June 15, 2021. The deadline for the submission of (40,000-65,000 characters including spaces) articles is November 30, 2021.
The issue is scheduled for publication in the spring of 2023. Detailed information about the journal can be found at https://werkstattgeschichte.de/ueber-uns/profil/.