{"id":1343,"date":"2026-09-28T14:21:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rupkatha.com\/books\/?p=1343"},"modified":"2026-09-28T15:20:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:20:57","slug":"cfc-silence-between-the-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rupkatha.com\/books\/cfc-silence-between-the-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Chapters | Silence between the Notes: Gender, Music and the Global Soundscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

An International Edited Volume <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Dr Pragati Das<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Faculty member in the PG and Research Department of English at Bhatter College, Dantan (Autonomous), West Bengal, India<\/span><\/p>\n

Historically, in music, questions of who is heard, who is represented, who is authorised to speak, and who remains unheard have remained deeply intertwined with gender. The \u2018silence\u2019 between the notes,<\/em> therefore, is the cultural, institutional, and historical spaces in which voices have been marginalised or rendered inaudible. At the same time, silence can become an active space of resistance and alternative voices. In view of these issues, the volume invites theoretically grounded interdisciplinary approaches to music. Feminist musicology offers insights into how musical forms, histories, institutions, and canonical traditions help construct gendered meanings. Susan McClary\u2019s Feminine Endings<\/em> (1991) opened influential possibilities for reading musical structures and conventions in relation to gender and sexuality. Marcia Citron\u2019s Gender and the Musical Canon<\/em> (2000) has drawn attention to the historical processes through which women composers and their works have been excluded from established musical canons. These perspectives raise questions about authorship, creativity, musical authority, canon formation and the culturally constructed figure of the musical \u201cgenius.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The volume considers voice and embodiment in relation to the politics of performance. Applying Judith Butler\u2019s theory of gender performativity (Gender Trouble, 1990) to musical contexts shows how vocal timbre, bodily movement, stage presence, performance conventions, and modes of listening can produce gendered identities. Chlo\u00eb Alaghband-Zadeh\u2019s concept of sonic performativity, developed through her study of North Indian classical vocal music (2015), can be utilised to show how gender may be articulated through vocal practice and culturally recognisable sonic conventions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Questions of representation and Othering form another important dimension of the volume. Lyrics, music videos, album covers, performance cultures and popular musical narratives construct women and gender minorities as objects or cultural Others. The central questions, therefore, are: who speaks, who is spoken about, whose desire is represented, and who is granted autonomous subjectivity? Laura Mulvey\u2019s concept of the male gaze (1975) and bell hooks\u2019s critique of racialised and gendered representation (Black Looks,<\/em> 1992) explain the visual construction of the musical body. Edward Said\u2019s Orientalism<\/em> (1978) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u2019s writings on subalternity and representation (1988) further open possibilities for examining the interconnectedness of gender, colonial power, cultural difference and the politics of voice.<\/span><\/p>\n

The volume also encourages intersectional and queer perspectives that resist treating gender as an isolated category. Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw\u2019s theory of intersectionality (1989) is particularly significant for Indian and South Asian musical cultures, where questions of musical respectability, access and authority have been determined by complex social hierarchies. Studies may therefore explore Dalit, Adivasi, minority, working-class, diasporic and queer musical practices alongside more established traditions. R. W. Connell\u2019s theory of masculinities (2005) also enables investigations into the relationship between musical genres, masculine authority, aggression, technological expertise and professional status.<\/span><\/p>\n

A further concern is the relationship between music, colonial modernity, memory and cultural erasure. Colonial and nationalist formations have contributed to changing binaries of respectable and disreputable performance, classical and popular music, tradition and modernity, and masculine and feminine musical authority. Amanda J. Weidman\u2019s Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern<\/em> (2006), for example, shows the importance of examining voice and musical practice within the postcolonial politics of South Indian music. Such approaches can illuminate the histories of the tawa’ifs and devadasi traditions, folk musicians, female performers and other communities whose musical practices have been negotiated through changing structures of morality, caste, respectability and nationalism. Similarly, the absence of women and marginalised musicians from established musical histories may itself be read as an archival silence. Derrida\u2019s insight in Archive Fever<\/em> (1995) can be used to consider how archives, institutions, and systems of preservation determine what is remembered, catalogued, and canonised and what becomes inaudible.<\/span><\/p>\n

The volume further recognises that music is embedded within material and institutional structures of labour and technology. Recording studios, educational institutions, publishing industries, festivals, media organisations, streaming platforms and professional networks all participate in determining whose music is produced, circulated and heard. Simon Frith\u2019s Performing Rites<\/em> (1996) and Lucy Green\u2019s Music, Gender, Education<\/em> (1997) offer important perspectives on music as a social and cultural practice determined by value, participation and education. These approaches open questions about gendered labour, access to technology, professional networks, production, remuneration and institutional authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, Silence Between the Notes<\/em> looks towards the digital and technological future of gendered sound. Digital production, streaming cultures, algorithmic recommendation, virtual performers, synthetic voices and artificial intelligence are transforming the relationship between the body, voice, technology and musical authorship. Donna Haraway\u2019s cyborg theory (1991), N. Katherine Hayles\u2019s work on virtual embodiment (1999), Rosi Braidotti\u2019s posthumanism (2013) and Karen Barad\u2019s theory of material-discursive entanglement (2007) provide necessary tools for examining these transformations.<\/span><\/p>\n

This volume therefore brings together interdisciplinary perspectives and seeks to explore the silences, voices, bodies, technologies and power structures that produce the global soundscape. The suggested topics below are indicative rather than exhaustive, and contributors are welcome to propose theoretically rigorous chapters that extend the conceptual and geographical scope of the volume.<\/span><\/p>\n

Suggested topics:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n