Cincinnati 2011Thirty-Seventh Annual Conference
Cincinnati, Ohio
9 - 13 March 2011
Call for Conference Seminars
DEADLINE: March 1, 2010
2011 Program Committee: Gillian M. Rodger, chair; Theo Cateforis, Josh Duchan, Maxine Fawcett-Yeske, Tony Sheppard, and Paul Wells.
Submissions should be emailed to Gillian Rodger
The Society invites proposals for seminar topics for the 37th Annual Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. The rationale behind the seminar format is to allow for a different kind of session that bears significantly on specific issues, genres, disciplines, styles, or regions of American Music in which:
1) a specific theme or topic that reflects some current preoccupation in the field, some recent hot-button issue, some important but neglected area of study, or some new field of research may be more deeply explored;
2) a specific ongoing problem in the nature of American Music studies can be more extensively tackled;
3) a topic that cannot be contained in a single session can be explored across several sessions and perhaps several days; and
4) accepted papers could be read in advance of the conference so that sessions can be devoted principally to a moderated discussion of the topic.
Topics and abstracts for seminars should be proposed in two stages. First, a coordinator proposes a topic. The program committee will vet the topics (in consultation with the Board) and announce the topics by March of 2010. Secondly, individuals will propose papers under the aegis of one of the topics. The choice of two topics will be continued at the Cincinnati meeting. The rest of the conference sessions will be in the usual format.
FOR COORDINATORS (due Monday, March 1, 2010): A broad topical theme in some area of American Music should first be proposed by someone who is willing to act as moderator or coordinator for the seminar. Topics, even those focusing on specific genres or regions, should ideally be issue-oriented and be construed broadly enough so they cannot be contained in a single panel. Proposals for seminar themes should be submitted by February 12 and should consist of three things: a 500-word abstract outlining the theme, a bibliography, and a cv of the coordinator. The proposal should convey the breadth of the topic, with reference to relevant bibliographical sources. The coordinator submitting the proposal is also free to identify or recommend to the program committee two or three presenters. This is to insure that there is sufficient expertise on the panel. The coordinator is responsible for contacting recommended presenters as well as alerting those who he or she thinks may be interested in contributing abstracts in support of the seminar theme. Each session will be 90 minutes long with no stated limit on the number of panelists. Once proposals for seminar topics have been reviewed, the two chosen by the program committee and board for the conference in Cincinnati will be announced by the time SAM meets in Ottawa in March, 2010.
FOR INDIVIDUAL PROPOSERS/ PANELISTS (due June 15, 2010): Unlike regular SAM sessions, in which papers are read, papers for the conference seminars will be posted at a password protected site in advance of the conference, where they may be read by interested conference registrants prior to the meeting. At the conference, a short précis of the paper may be given by each of the panelists, but the bulk of the session will be devoted to discussion of the papers as they relate to the general theme. Since papers will be posted electronically on the web, we would like to encourage materials that are recently published or �in press� as one kind of submission that would be appropriate for the seminar structure. These papers may be full articles, up to 20 pages, and should include notes, examples (where relevant), and bibliography. All abstracts should be submitted in the usual way by the regular SAM deadline, except that the specific seminar topic should be clearly specified. Unless the author specifies otherwise, abstracts not accepted for either of the two seminars will be considered by the program committee for one of the regular sessions.
Although papers for the seminars will not be �read� in the traditional sense, the act of participating in the seminar as a presenter and defending the ideas of one's paper constitutes the same level of participation in an academic conference as would a normal paper. For this reason, those submitting abstracts toward a seminar cannot also submit toward a regular session.
Submissions should be emailed to Gillian Rodger
