Music Theory Midwest invites scholars from all geographic regions to submit proposals on any area of music theory and analysis for our annual conference. This year’s conference will feature keynote speaker Nancy Murphy (University of Michigan) and a workshop led by Melissa Hoag (Oakland University). It will be held from June 25–28, 2026, at Wichita State University.
Individual Presentations
Papers should be planned for 20-minute presentations. Papers should not previously have been presented at national or international conferences, nor should they have been previously published. Only one proposal per submitter will be considered.
Proposals should be submitted electronically through the MTMW website. Submissions are due by February 16, 2026. Submit the proposal and supplemental materials as a single document in PDF format. The proposal should not exceed 500 words, including any footnotes or endnotes but not including the title. A maximum of four pages of supplementary materials (such as musical examples, diagrams, and bibliography) may be appended, and are excluded from the word count, but these materials should not add appreciably to the proposal’s content. The proposal must include the title of the paper but exclude the author’s name and any other identifying information. Such information must also be removed from the metadata of the file.
Special Sessions
Proposals for special sessions have no specific page limit. The names of the organizer and all participants should be indicated on the online submission form. Special sessions should be organized in such a way that the program committee could not create them from separately submitted individual proposals. Anyone wishing to propose a special session should contact the Program Committee chair, Cara Stroud (cstroud@msu.edu), well in advance of the proposal deadline.
Arthur J. Komar Award
Student presenters who wish to be considered for this award must indicate their eligibility in the online submission form. For the purposes of this award, “student” status terminates with the receipt of a terminal degree or employment in a full-time position. Additional information and a list of past recipients can be found on the MTMW website.
Submissions
To submit a proposal, visit the Call for Papers page on the MTMW website: https://mtmw.org/index.php/conferences/call-for-papers.
Deadline
Submissions must be received by February 16, 2026.
Notification
Those submitting proposals will receive notification of the program committee’s decision in mid-to-late April.
Evaluation Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated with several criteria, including:
- Strength and cogency of argument
- Contribution to the field
- Engagement with existing literature (where relevant)
- Musicality and relevance of analyses (where relevant)
- Effective use of illustrations or examples (where relevant)