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I invite your participation in the interdisciplinary conference American Sonic and Legal Landscapes to be held in Buffalo, New York on March 10, 2027.
Buffalo is the host city for the 2027 meeting of the Society for American Music, to take place March 11–14, 2027. Together with the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo School of Law, I am excited to host a “pre-conference conference” to explore the many rich intersections between music, sound, and the law. Please find a longer description of the conference below the following logistical information. I am very happy to answer further questions at lew9@buffalo.edu.
Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2027
Location: University at Buffalo School of Law
Call for Papers deadline: Wednesday, December 16, 2026 (decisions rendered by early January 2027)
Submission portal: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf80co_xehkVlKCVYhwHCHrq5rlzkvUgYbbvnDDNB1pNJKiFw/viewform?usp=header
Presentation format: 20-minute presentations + 10-minute Q&A
Travel support: The Baldy Center is pleased to provide presenters with hotel accommodations for the nights of March 9 and 10! On the conference day, lunch and dinner will also be provided to presenters.
Proposal details:
Please submit anonymous proposals of no more than 500 words. Proposals may include up to 3 pages of additional materials such as examples and bibliographies. The submission form will ask for identifying information, but please do not include such information in the proposal document itself.
Proposal decisions will be communicated via email. All necessary logistical information for the conference will also be sent over email to accepted participants.
Conference details:
Over the last several decades, music scholarship has flourished in legal spheres. In high-profile music copyright infringement cases, musicological ways of thinking have played a central role in case outcomes. Scholarly conversations have followed in spades. As fruitful as these conversations have been and continue to be, however, the focus on copyright has at times overshadowed other ways that music and sound come into contact with legal institutions. Such connections are vast. Scholars have highlighted the ways that music streaming has become a tool for surveillance, and female-coded voices are used by digital assistants to obscure the machines’ surveillance capabilities. Sound plays an even less hidden role as both an object of policing and as a means of social control. Legal barriers have long limited Indigenous groups’ ability to control musical and sonic aspects of their traditional cultural expressions. The conference will aim to highlight and develop further these areas of underexplored intersections between sound and law. At a time when the United States’ cultural institutions are vulnerable to censorship, conscription by fascist political agendas, and erasure through underfunding, it is particularly important to expand the reach of scholarly inquiry into art and law.
I hope to see you in Buffalo!
Sincerely,
Lauren Wilson
Associate Professor of Law
University at Buffalo School of Law
