CALL FOR PAPERS
"Italian Pop Music as Poetry"
Indiana University Bloomington - March 31, 2012

We are pleased to announce a conference that will be held on Saturday,
March 31, 2012 at Indiana University Bloomington on the topic of
"Italian Pop Music as Poetry."
The keynote speaker will be Alessandro Carrera, Professor of Italian
at the University of Houston.
The twentieth century and the advent of modern mass media have had a
profound impact on the way poetry is published and received. A
particularly notable example of this change is the musical text. In
the 1970s, for example, singer-songwriters like Fabrizio De André,
Lucio Dalla or Lucio Battisti changed not only the way Italians saw
music, but also the way they saw poetry. Today, such singers have had
a lasting impact on Italian music and popular culture. Some, like De
André, have even been anthologized alongside more traditional
twentieth-century poets. Pop music and lyrics reach a wider audience
than perhaps any other poetic texts, and deserve serious scholarly
attention not only for their aesthetic value, but also for their
cultural influence. We welcome papers that address Italian pop music
seen as poetry, or that address the relationship between music and
lyrics, or its relationship with literature, cinema or visual arts or
its use in language pedagogy.
Possible topics:
-The relationship between music and lyrics
-Lyrics by cantautori and other pop musicians viewed as literary texts
-The influence of the literary tradition on contemporary musical artists
-Music in recent literature
-Language in musical texts
-Lyrics in translation
-Music and politics
-"Musica popolare" or folk music
-Music in film
-Visual representation of musical texts: video exhibits, etc.
-Questions of genre in musical texts
-Gender and sexuality in musical texts
-The construction of identity (national, regional, generational, etc.)
in musical texts
-The use of music and lyrics in language pedagogy

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to
italianpopmusic at gmail.com by December 15. Participants will be
notified by January 31. Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes.