Call for Papers: Irony and/in Music

CFP: This is the Sound of Irony: Music, Politics and Popular Culture
Edited collection of essays with Ashgate’s Popular and Folk Music Series


The Oxford English Dictionary defines irony as "a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used." Music challenges this construction through the unique properties of its semantic indeterminacy, performance practices and re-appropriation for new ends. The subfield of music and irony is just beginning to be defined although it has been used, implied and decried by composers, performers, listeners and critics for centuries.

Irony in music is perhaps nowhere more effective than when it is/was employed as a means of destabilizing the powerful, challenging norms or creating dissent. This collection of essays addresses a variety of musical ironies found in the ‘notes themselves,’ in the text or subtext, and though performance, reception or criticism. Concerning popular music and art music for popular ends, this interdisciplinary volume invites contributors to engage with any of the myriad existing irony theories, to bend them to the unique medium of music, and to create new discourse for this most multifaceted of devices.


Currently, I am seeking articles in the following areas, but inquiries are always welcome.
        Pre-1900 / turn of the century
        Hip hop
        Music and technology

Please send a 250-300 word proposal with a short bio by 28 June. Full drafts of 6000 words (including notes) will be due 9 August 2013.

Best,
Katherine L. Turner, editor
KLTurner5@uh.edu