In the last ten years, the collaboration between music and history has intensified, especially in the Anglo-American part of the world. Cultural studies approaches in the history of the body and of emotions have proven to be particularly productive. In terms of medical historiography, however, there is a clear need to catch up. Music was already a popular topic in the earlier medical history, not least because of the passion of some representatives of medicine for music and famous composers (especially of classical, bourgeois musical works) as well as for history. However, musicology and music historiography have hardly benefited from the socio-historical perspectives in medical history under the sign of the patient history turn since the late 1990s, and more recent methodological and conceptual considerations within musicology and multidisciplinary sound studies have so far hardly been noticed, even in the cultural historically oriented fields of medical history.
This is where the 2021 annual conference of the Association for the Social History of Medicine begins. It would like to provide space and place for a dialogue between contributors from the fields of medical history and musicology interested in historical questions. In particular, young academics are cordially invited to apply with their own papers.
Contributions with a patient-oriented and gender-critical focus are particularly welcome. Ideally, each panel will create a dialogue so that the participating scholars from different disciplines can better engage in conversation. For example, music-analytical contributions should shed new light on approaches to medical history and, conversely, from a medical history perspective, patients should be brought into focus both as listeners and as music-producing individuals. The timeframe is broad: contributions related to different epochs from Antiquity to the recent past are possible. We call for contributions in the following subject areas, but "variations" are also welcome:
- Music and body / mind / psyche / nerves / emotion: anthropological ideas about the resonances of music and body; articles on the history of knowledge on neurology and music; musical metaphors in the symbolisation of human physiology; music analysis of sound experiences; contributions with a focus on the psychological aspects of creativity (keywords environmental psychology and stress reduction);
- The historical ear and music: contributions that historicise hearing itself or historical hearing of musical sounds;
- Music and therapy: history, spaces, actors, institutionalisation and forms of music therapy; how has music been used by medicine? And how was music - on the other hand - heard as therapy?
- Music and trauma / violence: instrumentalisation of music and musicians/composers through medicine and bio-politics; music as torture; music as violence against body and psyche; music as brainwashing; disturbing and hurtful musical sounds; music as a companion to violence;
- Music in medical spaces / soundscapes of medical environments: performance of music in health resorts and psychiatric hospitals; patients as audience and/or performers;
- Musicians as patients / patients as musicians: occupational health aspects for professional musicians; pathogenesis of so-called "musician's diseases"; composing and performing as musical expressions of pain and illness; setting to music / making sound of experiences of illness;
- Music and pandemics: from Fanny Hensel's Cholera Cantata to the 2020 balcony concerts: musical forms of articulation of epidemic experiences.
Please send proposals for individual presentations with abstracts of a maximum of 350 words and a short CV by 15 March 2021 by email to Maria Heidegger and Milijana Pavlović: maria.heidegger@uibk.ac.ac ; milijana.pavlovic@uibk.ac.at
Notification of acceptance/rejection will be sent by 15 May 2021 and the preliminary conference programme by the end of June 2021.
The conference languages are German and English.
Select conference contributions will be published in the journal “Virus. Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin” (print and open access) after a peer-review process.
The conference fee amounts to €100 and covers the costs incurred for the supporting programme, drinks, snacks and coffee breaks. Students are exempted from the conference fee and grants are available for a limited number of young academics without institutional affiliation.
Of course, all those interested in medicine and music history who will not be giving a paper of their own are cordially invited to attend and participate in discussions. The public has the opportunity to visit individual days / panels with a reduced conference fee.
The keynote address will be given by Morag J. Grant, University of Edinburgh.
The closing commentary will be given by Daniel Morat, Freie Universität Berlin.
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