Call for Abstracts – Oral/Aural: Pastness and Sound as Medium and Method (Kronos: Southern African Histories Special Issue 2022)

 

What core contemporary problems do scholars and curators face either studying sound or deploying the sonic as a critical category in the analogue or digital and distributed milieu of contemporary media? What of sound, the past, and Africa as concept, geography, and problem-space (Scott, 2004)? What does it mean to take the convergence of the oral and the aural in studies of sound in and of Africa as an invitation to think about method, medium, and study in relation to sound in general? With this special issue, we invite scholars, artists, and curators to submit critical reflections on sound as a generative problem in historical scholarship and curatorial practice. 

 

We welcome submissions that directly address or are broadly interested in:

  • sound and historiography, history, and the African past
  • critical sound and archival practice
  • orality and aurality
  • music and musical practice
  • sound as medium
  • sound as disciplinary object
  • sonic cartographies/geographies of Africa

 

We invite scholars and practitioners in the following areas of interest and disciplines to contribute:

  • historical acoustemology
  • sonic/aural or music history
  • sensory studies
  • music studies, musicology, ethnomusicology
  • archival and collecting practice
  • sound art and musical practice
  • oral history and disciplinary histories of sonic apprehension andrepresentation
  • linguistics and histories of language and sound
  • DJ scholarship, and curatorial practices around sound and the past
  • other forms of sonic object focused performative and compositionalwork

 

Please submit an abstract no longer than 350 words
to aerasmus@uwc.ac.za by 15 January 2022.

By late January 2022, authors will be notified whether to submit a full article for peer review by late March 2022. Please note that invitations to submit articles for peer review do not guarantee publication, and that articles selected for publication after peer review will be included in the 2022 volume
of Kronos.

Please provide a short biography (30 words maximum) and kindly save your abstract and bio to a file that is named: Surname, First Name, oralaural. Any queries should be addressed to Aidan Erasmus
at aerasmus@uwc.ac.za or Valmont Layne at vlayne@uwc.ac.za.

More details are available here.