I am pleased to invite article proposals for a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Contexts called Music and the Senses. The issue invites scholars of a variety of backgrounds to reflect on the ways music and our modes of perception—our senses—informed each other in nineteenth-century culture. How, for example, did authors of the era link music to the physical sensation of touch, of being in nature or in a crowded city? How did the sound of music, like smell, link to memory in nineteenth-century life? How did music shape individual or collective senses of belonging? How, also, do the musical and visual come together not just in nineteenth-century performance culture, but also in ways we examine nineteenth-century history? And, last, how does music relate to sense as in meaning in the nineteenth century?
Through such questions, Music and the Senses seeks novel, interdisciplinary ways of contextualizing music’s role in the daily life of individuals and communities during the long nineteenth century. In public and in private, music complemented culinary experiences, visual spectacle, the sensations of city life or the natural world. It accompanied intimate occasions, solitary reflection, ceremonies of joy or sadness, war and politics. Music, and the musicians of all levels who created it, helped to construct the sensorial world of nineteenth-century cultures across the globe. This special issue, thus, frames music within a multitude of fields and across national, linguistic, and generic borders. Contributors to this issue will not only explore how music enhances our perception; they will also investigate how music relates to our very capacity for feeling and being in a sensuous world. This call seeks submissions that conjoin music and the senses from a broad variety of methodological and interdisciplinary perspectives focusing on the 19th century, including, but not limited to:
- Music and meaning
- Music and memory
- Music and reading
- Music and silence
- Music and visual culture
- Music and food
- Music and smell
- Music and touch
- Music and synesthesia
- Music and desire or dreams
- Music and solitude
- Music and madness
- Music and health
- Music and death
- Music and nature
- Music and the city
I invite scholars of literature, musicology, history, anthropology, art history, philosophy, and performance studies, among others, to submit article proposals. This issue is not limited to any particular geographical area. Citations in original languages alongside English translations are welcome. Please send proposals of 300 words in .doc or .docx format with “NCC Music and the Senses” in the subject line to Dane Stalcup dane.stalcup@wagner.edu by November 15, 2021. Authors will be notified of acceptance by November 30, 2021. The deadline for contributions (Chicago author-date, approx. 7,000 words, inclusive of works cited and notes) will be May 15, 2022.
last modified 24 September 2021