Symposium Description: 

The ways sounding technologies contribute to the articulation of musical lives and social selves has been a growing area of scholarly interest over the past several decades. Considerations of music technologies’ and tools’ material affordances, attendant social practices, cultural codings, and political ecologies have been taken up by scholars in musicology, gender studies, media studies, science and technology studies, and beyond. Reconsidering Music, Technology, and Gender is a one-day symposium that seeks to revisit the many ways in which musicians and listeners utilize technology (through various plug-ins and softwares, the internet, hardwares, instruments, and platforms) to create, challenge, subvert, and affirm. This symposium calls for renewed and new perspectives on the intersections of music, technology, and gender, enlivened attention to contemporary contexts and practices of music making, and un- or under-told counterhistories of celebrations and governances of gender in musical life. We welcome proposals that engage the three terms, but need not otherwise be limited vis-à-vis genre, geography, sound, social milieu, or disciplinary methodology. Scholars and practitioners are invited to present in a variety of formats, including but not limited to: conference-style papers, panels, musical performances, and production demonstrations.

This symposium is presented by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in collaboration with the Center for the Musical Humanities and co-organizers Catherine Provenzano and Lily Shababi.