2019 Call for Papers

The Program Committee for the 2019 meeting of the South-Central Society for Music Theory invites proposals on any topic related to music theory. The conference will be held at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on March 15–16, 2019.

The conference will feature two workshops that are open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. In addition, a reading list for each workshop will be available online, and the public is invited to participate in on-site workshop events.

The first workshop will be on “Tonal and Harmonic Ambiguity in the Analysis of Popular Music,” led by Trevor de Clercq (Middle Tennessee State University). The second will be on “Incorporating Computational and Corpus Methods into Your Research,” led by Daniel Shanahan (Ohio State University). We are projecting that each workshop will have room for approximately 12 participants. We encourage scholars at all career stages to sign up for either workshop. Information on how to sign up is described below (Step 3 of the Submissions Instructions). For those interested in participating in a workshop but not in submitting a paper proposal, simply e-mail Clare Eng (clare.eng@belmont.edu) with your preferences.

PRESENTATION FORMATS: Proposals will be considered for two formats: 20-minute papers or 10-minute lightning talks. Both formats will have 10 minutes of discussion: while papers will be discussed individually, lightning talks will be discussed collectively. The Program Committee may accept a proposed paper under the condition that it be transformed into a lightning talk.

EMAIL DEADLINE: Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 11:59pm EST. Confirmation of proposals received will be made electronically upon their receipt.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

Submissions should consist of two elements: (1) a proposal, with any supplementary material combined into a single document, in pdf format; and (2) information about the author(s). An abstract is not needed for proposal submission, but authors of accepted proposals will be asked later to provide a 250-word abstract.

1) Proposals should be no longer than 500 words (with up to four pages of supplemental examples and materials, exclusive to the 500-word limit); they should be double-spaced and use a 12-point font. Proposals should articulate the paper’s premise, its relation to existing music theoretic research, and provide some illustration of applications. Since proposals will be evaluated anonymously, they should exclude the author’s name and any other direct or indirect signal of authorship. References to the author’s own work must occur in the third person. “Author” tags must be removed from electronic files. (In Adobe Acrobat, go to the “File” menu, select “Properties” and delete the name from the Author box.)

2) E-mail the proposal pdf as an attachment to: clare.eng@belmont.edu. Please put “SCSMT 2019 Proposal” in the email subject heading. In the body of the email, provide the following information: title of proposal, preferred presentation format (paper or lightning talk), author’s name (with rank and institutional affiliation if applicable), author’s address, author’s e-mail address, and a list of technical or audio-visual requirements. Please note that the Program Committee may accept a proposed paper under the condition that it be transformed into a lightning talk.

3) In the same email, please indicate whether you are interested in participating in a workshop. If you are open to participating in either workshop, rank the workshops in order of preference; if you only wish to participate in one workshop, identify only that workshop.

4) Graduate students should indicate whether they wish to be considered for the SCSMT Student Paper Award. Candidates must submit a copy of the full paper to the program chair (clare.eng@belmont.edu) by Friday, February 15th, 2019 at 11:59pm EST.

SUBMISSION RESTRICTIONS:

1) No author may appear in more than one proposal, unless both proposals are for different presentation formats.

2) Previously published papers or papers given at national or international conferences will not be considered.

SCSMT 2019 Program Committee: Clare Sher Ling Eng, Program Chair (Belmont University), Jeremy Orosz (University of Memphis), Angela Ripley (The College of Wooster), and Andrew Selle (Purdue University Fort Wayne).