The students of the Department of Music at The Graduate Center, CUNY, are pleased to announce the 28th Annual GSIM Conference, held on April 26–27, 2025. The conference will be held fully in person for attendees. However, we are offering the option for presenters to share their work virtually via Zoom if they are unable to attend the conference in person. In addition to student presentations, a keynote address will be given by Maureen Mahon, Professor of Music at New York University, whose research focuses on constructions of race, gender, and sexuality in music. Her most recent book, Black Diamond Queens, explores the pivotal part African American women have played in the development of rock and roll.
We invite graduate students in all disciplines who work on music to submit proposals for presentations relating to the theme of “Musical Labor and Process.” This theme is meant to be construed broadly, but we encourage presentations that expand the definition of what constitutes musical labor and especially highlights the work of historically marginalized groups or those who have been excluded from traditional narratives of music-making. Fruitful topics might include (but are certainly not limited to):
Compositional process
Performance practice
Historical narratives of music
“Art” and “popular” music distinctions
Materiality
Work music performs in society
Analytical work and paradigms
Music pedagogy and scholarship
Musical spaces
Music technology and production
Music publishing
Labor and ethics of care
Community/nonprofessional music-making
We are accepting proposals for academic papers and lecture-recitals. Applicants should plan for a 20-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute discussion.
Proposals should be no more than 300 words in length. Up to two additional pages of examples/references and/or three minutes of a recording excerpt may be included but are not required. Everything should be compiled together in a single PDF and a single MP3 file. Files should be no bigger than 5 MB.
Proposal PDFs must not include the author’s name and should be purged of any indication of the author’s identity. Digital author tags should be removed from the metadata of PDFs.
Please indicate at the top of your proposal your preferred modality of presentation (lecture-recital, academic paper, or no preference).
Please indicate at the top of your proposal whether you can attend the conference in person or can ONLY present virtually.
If you are submitting a proposal featuring a new composition, please include a summary of your planned remarks about your piece (e.g., musical analysis, cultural context, historical framing, etc.).
Proposals should be submitted via email to CUNY.GSIM@gmail.com. Please be sure to include your name and institutional affiliation (if any) in the email body when submitting your proposal. The deadline for submission is Monday, January 27, 11:59 pm EST, 2025. Questions may be addressed to co-chairs Madison Spahn and Diana Maron at CUNY.GSIM@gmail.com.