ACTIVIST TRANSFORMATIONS/ TRANSFORMING ACTIVISM
Illinois Student Association of Music Scholars (ISAMS) First Interdisciplinary Conference
Friday April 25
Smith 25, Smith Memorial Hall
Free and Open to the Public
6:30 pm
Welcome by Dr. Jeffrey Magee, Director of the University of Illinois School of Music and Professor of Music and Theatre
6:35 pm
Introduction by Megan Woller, President of ISAMS
6:35 pm Keynote:
Ethnomusicology and Advocacy Research: Ukraine as Case Study
Dr. Adriana Helbig, Assistant Professor of Music, University of Pittsburgh
Funded by:
The Student Organization Research Fee
Saturday April 26
Music Room, Levis Faculty Center
8:30 am
Registration and Coffee
9:00 am
Panel 1: Composer as Activist
Chair: Professor Stephen Taylor, Associate Professor of
Composition-Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Feminism as Nationalism?: A Critical Perspective on Dame Ethel Smyth
Trevor Nelson, Michigan State University
An Inescapable Sermon: Expressions of Spirituality and Nationality in Ralph
Vaughan Williams’s A Song of Thanksgiving (1944)
Emily Wuchner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Variation with a Point: Social Critique in Frederic Rzewski’s Polytonal Works
Bree Guerra, University of Texas-Pan American
10:30 am
Coffee Break
10:45 am
Panel 2: Social Activism and Performance
Chair: Dr. Michael Silvers, Assistant Professor of Musicology,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”: Music, Spectacle and the Execution of John Wayne Gacy
Michael Siletti, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“I want to be normal”: representations of gender and sexuality in the music of the
former Yugoslavia
Laura Jorgensen, University of Texas at Austin
(En)voicing Pluralism: Janelle Monáe’s Cyber-vocalities
Christopher Nickell, New York University
12:15 pm
Lunch Break (provided)
1:30 pm
Film Screening and Discussion:
WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971), Directed by Dušan
Makavejev
Introduced by Steve Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dinner on your own
7:30 pm
optional
Concert: Balkanalia
“Zbogom Selo: Songs of Farewell, Dances of Joy”
Recital Hall, Smith Memorial Hall
Free and Open to the Public
Sunday, April 27
Music Room, Levis Faculty Center
9:00 am
Coffee
9:30 am
Panel 3: Space and Identity
Chair: Lillie Gordon, Visiting Lecturer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Staging the Revolution: Live Music and Social Change in “Post”-Revolutionary Egypt
Darci Sprengel, University of California, Los Angeles
Digital Activism and Expressive Culture in the Syrian Revolution
Maria Trogolo, Indiana University
Queering the Harp: Reorienting Social Space in Midwestern Sacred Harp Singing
Jonathon Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
11:00 am
Concluding Roundtable Discussion
Moderated by Dr. Adriana Helbig, Assistant Professor of Music, University of Pittsburgh