AMS Call for Proposals

The eighty-eighth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) will be held jointly with the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and the Society for Music Theory (SMT) on 10–13 November 2022.

The Annual Meeting promotes the study and teaching of music. It builds community and supports scholars through a range of approaches and presentational modes, including historical musicology, creative practice, ethnography, analysis, performance, musical demonstrations, policy, civic engagement, sound artifact curation, and digital humanities. The 2022 call for proposals and the Program Committee procedures are designed to reflect changes in the society’s scholarly and demographic profile and aim to encourage new modes of sharing ideas.

Guided by the AMS’s Statement on Fair Practice and Representation, the Program Committee seeks to create a positive working, learning, and social environment in which a diverse society may develop and flourish. Issues of fairness and representation will be an integral part of the process of creating the program.

At the Annual Meeting, the society invites music scholars, teachers, performers and public intellectuals to share work and ideas in the proposal types listed below. A successful proposal articulates the main points of the presentation clearly, positions its contributions in the context of previous work, and suggests its significance for the Society’s membership. Session organizers are advised to convene a diverse panel.

The AMS Program Committee invites organizers to submit the following types of proposals:

  • Individual Proposals. The Program Committee invites individual paper proposals. Papers will be 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for discussion. The Program Committee will compile these individual papers into topically based three-paper sessions.
  • Session Proposals. The Program Committee strongly encourages potential participants to collaborate on proposals for 90-minute sessions of three papers. Each paper is 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Session organizers are responsible for submitting a summary session abstract as well as individual paper abstracts. Organizers must also indicate a session chair and may identify a respondent if appropriate.
  • Workshops. The Program Committee encourages workshops whose formats include but are not limited to sessions combining performance and scholarship; collections of short position papers; and discussions of publications or creative works. Educators, artists, and curators, for example, may lead interactive workshops to emphasize challenges and possibilities of music scholarship, performance, and activism. Proposals should list participants and outline the session format.
  • Roundtables. The Program Committee welcomes roundtable proposals that provide a space for participants to engage in dialogue with each other and the audience. Roundtables might include forums with scholars, community activists, artists, public officials; conversations among performing artists, curators, and educators about aesthetic and expressive innovations or the challenges of developing public cultures in diverse communities.
  • Poster Presentations. Proposals for poster presentations should follow the guidelines for the submission of individual proposals but also include an explanation of the content and goals of the graphic presentation. Guidelines for posters will be distributed with acceptance information.
  • Films. This category offers space for presenters to display a recently completed or in-progress film or video. A session of up to 180 minutes should include time for an introduction and discussion. Submit title, subject, and information on the introduction/discussion. Indicate the length of both the film/video and the introduction/discussion.

All proposal abstracts must be 350 words or less.

 

Joint Sessions

For this special meeting, the program committees of the AMS, SEM, and SMT enthusiastically invite proposals for joint sessions, bringing together participants from across the societies. Joint session proposals may be for either 90 minutes or 180 minutes and should present a balance of participants from two or three societies. Joint session proposals will be considered as a unit by the Program Committees of the AMS, SEM, and/or SMT, and will be programmed as a joint session only if accepted by all relevant Program Committees. (However, a proposal for a joint session may be programmed as a solo AMS, SEM, or SMT session if one of the Program Committees so chooses.) Joint session proposals may be for multi-paper sessions, workshops, or roundtables, as defined above. Proposals must identify the number of participants from each society.

  • Joint Session Proposals. Multi-paper session proposals should include a summary and individual abstracts. These proposals will be evaluated anonymously and should contain no direct or indirect signal of authorship. Joint session proposals may be comprised of either three papers (90 minutes) or six papers (180 minutes).
  • Joint Workshops. Proposals should identify participants and outline the session format.
  • Joint Roundtables. Proposals should identify participants and outline the session format.

All proposal abstracts must be 350 words or less.

 

AMS Program Committee Procedures

With the goal of expanding participation in the creation of the Society’s annual meetings, proposals will first be read by an external pool of reviewers made up of AMS members holding PhDs in musicology or a related field. To serve as an annual meeting reviewer, one must be an AMS member. The call for members to volunteer to serve as reviewers will go out in late December. Those submitting proposals to the Program Committee are not eligible to serve as annual meeting reviewers. The Program Committee will deliberate on the recommendations of the volunteer readers and create the final program of the  annual meeting.

 

Application Restrictions

Only one proposal per person per society (AMS, SEM, and/or SMT) is allowed. No one may appear on the program more than twice (Committee and Study Group sessions are excluded from this rule). An individual may participate in any of the presentation formats listed above and appear one other time on the program as a chair of a session or as a respondent.

Proposals of the same or similar content cannot be submitted by the same person to more than one of the three societies. An individual may submit different proposals to the AMS, SEM, and/or SMT but must indicate the multiple submissions on the online submission page and select (in the case of multiple acceptances) which proposal would take priority. Authors who present on an SEM or SMT session may not also present on an AMS session or a joint session. In the case of multiple acceptances, the Program Committees will give preference to any paper that is part of a proposed session.

Note: The American Musicological Society’s “Alternate Years Rule” has been suspended for the 2022 annual meeting.

 

Submission Procedure

Proposals (including proposals for joint sessions) must be received by 11:59 p.m. CST, 15 February 2022.

Proposals are to be submitted electronically. A link to the proposal submission site will be available on 10 December 2021.

Please note that proposal submission ceases precisely at the deadline. To avoid technical problems with submission please submit at least twenty-four hours before the deadline. Proposals received after the deadline cannot be considered.

Notifications of the Program Committee’s decisions will be sent in early June.

Sessions organized by such groups as AMS committees, Study Groups, and affiliated societies are not reviewed by the Program Committee and have a separate proposal submission process.

Deadline: 11:59 p.m. CST, 15 February 2022