Music, italianità and the nineteenth-century global imagination

16-17 septembre 2016, Cambridge
CFP Deadline: 17 Apr 2016

Music has long been a signifier of Italian identity, and its bearing on both popular and scholarly views of Italian nation-building during the long nineteenth century has only recently been seriously contested. At the same time, a growing body of scholarship has emerged that approaches musical italianità in this period as a set of shifting cultural constructs shaped by acts of (real or imaginary) border-crossing. This in turn invites critical attention on the nineteenth-century musical construction of Italianness from novel viewpoints, including the global and transnational.

Funded by a three-year grant from the Leverhulme Trust (IN-2015-045), a new research network will seek to address these issues from a variety of perspectives. The first conference of the network will be held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), at the University of Cambridge, on 16-17 September 2016. The conference proposes to explore different facets—geographical, historical, artistic and theoretical—of the relationship between music and italianità in an explicitly global context during the ‘long' nineteenth century. We invite submissions for 20-minute papers on relevant topics.

Abstracts of 300 words may be sent to Alexander Kolassa (ucrakol -at- ucl.ac.uk) until 17 April. The outcome will be announced by 9 May. A limited number of bursaries covering part of the travelling and accommodation costs will be made available to students presenting a paper at the conference. Applications for these will open in June. For any queries, please contact either Francesca Vella (fv250 -at- cam.ac.uk) or Benjamin Walton (bw283 -at- cam.ac.uk).