CALLS FOR PAPERS: AFTER THE MAGIC FLUTE
June 9, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Music
March 5-6, 2010
Call for Papers (abstract deadline: September 1, 2009)
As Tamino stands before the three temple doors in Act I of The Magic Flute, he is about to embark on a humbling confrontation with the good-evil alignments he (and we) had previously assigned to the Queen of the Night and Sarastro. Interpretive work on Mozart’s enduringly perplexing Singspiel is currently at a similar threshold. Recent scholarship has shifted away from the Masonic and Enlightenment-allegory readings of past decades in favor of increasingly decentralized readings that consider the work’s implications with respect to race, gender, voice, and agency. In addition, new historical information has emerged regarding the immediate context of The Magic Flute within the Viennese theatrical tradition; a new edition of the autograph score is about to be published; and adventurous (often activist) productions–set everywhere from South Africa, to a Berlin subway station, to the trenches of World War I–have attracted the collaboration of artists as varied as William Kentridge, Julie Taymor, Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, and Kenneth Branagh.
The goal of this interdisciplinary conference is to take the measure of these new developments in the history and historiography of The Magic Flute, with the “after” of the conference’s title referring not exclusively to inquiries regarding adaptation or reception, but rather signaling a critical reevaluation of the persistent urge to “unlock” The Magic Flute with a single, symbolic key. The conference committee welcomes proposals from scholars interested in examining The Magic Flute from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, film and media studies, performance studies, cultural and social history, literary and art history, and reception studies. Featured speakers will include Wye J. Allanbrook (Emerita, Musicology, University of California, Berkeley) and Jane Brown (Germanics and Comparative Literature, University of Washington).
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by September 1, 2009 to conference organizer Adeline Mueller (aomueller (at) berkeley.edu). Notification of acceptance will be sent via email on October 1.
Adeline Mueller
Department of Music
University of California
Berkeley CA 94720-1200
aomueller (at) berkeley.edu
