Call for Papers
Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference
Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, United Kingdom
4-7 August 2015
Congregational music-making is a vital and vibrant practice within Christian communities worldwide. It reflects, informs, and articulates convictions and concerns that are irreducibly local even as it flows along
global networks. Congregational song can unify communities of faith across geographical and cultural boundaries; however, it can also be used to mark divisions between Christians of different denominations, cultural backgrounds, and social classes, and to negotiate or articulate difference in relation to religious outsiders. We therefore cannot understand the meanings, uses, and influences of congregational music within Christianity without exploring both its local contexts and its translocal, transnational, and global circulation.
The third biennial Christian Congregational Music conference will be held in 2015. Its goal is to expand the avenues of scholarly inquiry into congregational music-making by bringing together world-class scholars and practitioners to explore the varying cultural, social, and spiritual roles church music plays in the life of various Christian communities around the world. To this end, the conference facilitates a multifaceted dialogue among participants from a variety of academic disciplines, including musicology, ethnomusicology, theology, anthropology, history, and education.
The 2015 conference is focused on a sustained reflection about the theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches used to study congregational music. What new methodological approaches‹whether from the hard sciences, social sciences, humanities, or theological disciplines‹can
be brought to bear on timely research questions, such as congregational music’s relation to indigenization, transnationalism, religious experience, and ethics? What new understandings about congregational music
are generated with the introduction of theoretical perspectives from, for example, gender studies, postcolonial thought, neuroscience, or political economy? Although the Programme Committee will prioritise papers that bring new insights to any aspect of theory or methodology, papers addressing other topics relevant to Christian congregational music are also welcomed.
We are now accepting proposals (maximum 250 words) for individual papers and for organised panels consisting of three papers. The online proposal form can be found on the conference website at
http://congregationalmusic.
Proposals must be received by 12 December 2014.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 26 January 2015, and conference registration will begin on 31 January 2015. Further instructions and information will be made available on the conference website at http://congregationalmusic.org
