Deadline: 11:59 p.m. CST, 15 February 2024

The ninetieth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) will be held on 14–17 November 2024 in Chicago, Illinois at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel.

The AMS annual meeting promotes the study and teaching of music. It builds community and supports inquiry about music through a range of approaches and presentational modes, including historical musicology, creative practice, ethnography, analysis, performance, musical demonstrations, policy, civic engagement, sound artifact curation, and digital humanities.

Guided by the AMS’s Statement on Fair Practice and Representation, the Program Committee seeks to create a positive working, learning, and social environment in which a diverse society may develop and flourish, and in which all conference-goers find a forum for exciting conversations about the music they love.

The Society invites music scholars, teachers, performers and public intellectuals to share work and ideas in the proposal types listed below. A successful proposal articulates the main points of the presentation clearly, positions its contributions in the context of previous work, and suggests its significance for the conference attendees. Session organizers are advised to convene panels with diverse and representative participants.

The AMS Program Committee invites organizers to submit the following types of proposals:

• Session Proposals. The Program Committee strongly encourages potential participants to collaborate on proposals for 90-minute sessions of three papers. Each paper is 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Session organizers are responsible for submitting a summary session abstract as well as individual paper abstracts. Organizers must also indicate a session chair and may include a respondent if appropriate.
• Individual Proposals. The Program Committee invites individual paper proposals. Paper presenters will have up to 20 minutes to present their work. The Program Committee will compile individual papers into topically-based three-paper sessions, which will include at least 30 minutes for Q&A.
• Workshops. The Program Committee encourages workshops whose formats include but are not limited to sessions combining performance and scholarship; collections of short position papers; and discussions of publications or creative works. Educators, artists, and curators, for example, may lead interactive workshops to emphasize challenges and possibilities of music scholarship, performance, and activism. Proposals should list participants and outline the session format. Organizers must also indicate a session chair and may include a respondent if appropriate.
• Roundtables. The Program Committee welcomes roundtable proposals that provide a space for participants to engage in dialogue with each other and the audience. Roundtables might, for example, include forums with scholars, community activists, artists, public officials; or conversations among performing artists, curators, and educators about aesthetic and expressive innovations or the challenges of developing public cultures in diverse communities. Organizers must also indicate a session chair and may include a respondent if appropriate.
• Poster Presentations. Proposals for poster presentations should follow the guidelines for the submission of individual proposals but also include an explanation of the content and goals of the graphic presentation. Guidelines for posters will be distributed with acceptance information.
• Films. This category offers space for presenters to display a recently completed or in-progress film or video. A session of up to 120 minutes should include time for an introduction and discussion. Submit title, subject, and information on the introduction/discussion. Indicate the length of both the film/video and the introduction/discussion.

All proposal abstracts must be 350 words or less. All work proposed for presentation at the 2024 AMS Annual Meeting must be original.

Remote Presenter Sessions

The American Musicological Society is interested in promoting accessibility by experimenting with hybrid session models and formats. In service of this goal, it will provide the option for proposal submitters to designate their individual paper proposal as either an in-person presentation or a remote presentation. If a proposal is designated as a remote presentation, it will be considered for inclusion in a limited number of hybrid four-paper sessions.

These four-paper sessions will include two remote presenters (selected from those applying to this track), two in-person presenters (selected from the general, in-person pool of annual meeting presenters), and an in-person chair or moderator. Remote presenters will be able to fully participate in the session, including the Q&A, via two-way video. Moreover, to ensure that the opportunity to presentWe  remotely will be reserved to those who genuinely cannot travel to the conference (because of disability, visa issues, lack of access to financial support, etc.), individuals who propose papers for this track will not be eligible to present in-person or to propose to present in-person.

Only individuals who cannot travel to present in-person are eligible to submit a remote paper presentation proposal. Individuals proposing also to present in person, including as part of guaranteed study group and committee sessions, will be disqualified from being considered for remote presentation. If accepted and placed on the program, remote presenters will be required—like all other presenters, both in-person and proxy—to register for the annual meeting.

Proposals for this special remote presentation track will be assessed and arranged into panels by the AMS Program Committee using the same processes and criteria applied to the assessment and programming of paper proposals from in-person presenters. An effective proposal for this pilot remote presentation track will articulate the main points of the presentation clearly, position its contributions in the context of previous knowledge, and suggest its significance for conference attendees. Remote presenter proposals are due on 15 February 2024, 11:59pm CST.

Areas of Special Interest

In an effort to encourage proposals in areas of special interest or urgency to the Society and its constituents, the Committee on the Annual Meeting & Public Events (CAMPE) has designated certain topic areas or types of sessions as being of “special interest.” This designation means that the Society would like to see more of these types of proposals or sessions in the submission pool and has instructed the AMS Office and Program Committee to ensure that more of these types of proposals or sessions are included in the final program.

For the 2024 AMS Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, CAMPE has designated the following as being of “special interest.”

• Professional Development Workshops, Sessions, and Roundtables
  The AMS particularly welcomes proposals for sessions that either 1) are broadly applicable to those trained or working in musicology, music pedagogy, music performance, music theory, music analysis, and related fields, or 2) offer practical strategies that address the challenges, needs, and concerns of discrete constituencies trained or working in those areas. For the purposes of this call, a “professional development session” is understood to mean any workshop, roundtable, or paper session primarily focused on helping participants do one or more of the following:

1. 1. acquire and improve work-related skills, including archival and pedagogical skills, strategies for increasing equity, diversity, and inclusion in workplaces, and more;
   2. better understand and navigate the processes of entering or advancing in a particular career or line of work (including devising strategies for navigating specific challenges or constraints); or
   3. build stronger and more supportive networks of peers and colleagues.

• Session proposals

The AMS particularly welcomes proposals for full sessions, on any theme or area of music studies. The Society’s goal is to maximize discussion among participants by programming highly coherent sessions that clearly and cogently explore an area or topic from multiple perspectives. Potential participants should collaborate on proposals for 90-minute sessions of three papers. Organizers must also indicate a session chair and may include a respondent if appropriate.

As an incentive to submitters, proposals that focus on these areas of special interest will be preferentially treated by the Program Committee and are more likely (although by no means guaranteed) to be included in the program.

Submission Procedures/Restrictions

Proposals must be received by 11:59 p.m. CST, 15 February 2024. Proposals are to be submitted electronically. The proposal submission site will be made available on or before 10 December 2023. (Note: Access to the proposal submission portal ceases precisely at the deadline. To avoid technical problems with submission please submit at least twenty-four hours before the deadline.)

Only one proposal per person is allowed. No one may appear on the program more than twice. (Note: Committee and study group sessions are excluded from this rule.) An individual may participate in any one of the presentation formats listed above and appear one other time on the program as a chair of a session or a respondent.

A successful proposal articulates the main points of the presentation clearly, positions its contributions in the context of previous knowledge, and suggests its significance for conference attendees. Session organizers are advised to convene panels with diverse and representative participants.

Proposal Review

All AMS annual meeting proposals are read by a large pool of volunteer reviewers. All members of this pool of reviewers, usually numbering at least 50 or more, hold advanced degrees in musicology or related fields and are randomly assigned proposals to review. Abstracts are blindly reviewed and rated without reference to the identity of the author(s).  Reviewer ratings are then statistically normalized, pooled and shared with the Program Committee, which has access to the full details of all proposals. (The call for members to volunteer to serve as reviewers will go out in late December 2023. Those submitting proposals to the Program Committee are not eligible to serve as annual meeting reviewers.)

In composing the program, the Program Committee relies on these reviewer ratings to create a balanced and wide-ranging program, selecting preferentially from the most highly rated proposals, with an eye toward session balance and thematic diversity. Guidance on preparing a winning conference proposal, with examples of highly rated proposals from prior years, will be made available on the conference website well in advance of the submission deadline.

Notifications of the Program Committee’s decisions will be sent in early June.

Committee, Study Group and Affiliate Proposals

Sessions organized by AMS committees, study groups, and affiliated are not reviewed by the Program Committee and have a separate proposal submission process and deadline. (See the “AMS 2024 Call for Committee and Study Group Proposals.”) The deadline for the submission of these proposals is 11:59 p.m. CST, 15 March 2024. Committees and study groups that fail to submit their proposals by that deadline may forfeit their right to have their sessions included on the program; including annually recurring sessions, such as named lectureships.