CFP: 11th Annual AMS/SMT/SEM After Dark, online, 21 Nov 8pm EST (proposals due 24 Oct) Call for Papers

Esteemed Colleagues,

Since 2016, we at #AMSafterdark have hosted an annual comedy panel to accompany the fascinating scholarship we encounter at AMS/SMT/SEM conferences.

Like any other panel, it begins with a CFP. Please send us your ideas/proposals, & we will review them. If chosen, you will be asked to deliver a 5-7 minute talk (about 3 pages). Afterwards, the audience will hopefully deliver the most delightful Q&A you have ever experienced.

The 2026 event will take place Saturday, November 21, 8:00pm EST ONLINE at twitch.tv/bardicknowledge

The event is FREE, & ANYONE IS INVITED. Awards will be given for categories like most esoteric, most likely to be a real conference paper in 50 years, & most self-indulgent question.

CFP: AMS/SMT/SEM AFTER DARK XI: REDUNDANCY
“I repeat myself when under stress; I repeat myself when under stress; I repeat myself when under stress; I repeat . . . .” These words–famously uttered by Robert Steven “Adrian” Belew on the 1981 track “Indiscipline” (from English progressive rock band King Crimson’s 1981 eighth studio album, Discipline)–highlight one particularly commonplace experience of redundancy. Our 11th annual AMS/SMT/SEM After Dark panel explores the phenomenon of redundancy, broadly construed. We invite interdisciplinary proposals that encourage us to critically rethink our cultural reconsideration of musically re-evaluated historical re-examinations of rhetorically revised analyses, through (auto)ethnographic revisitation of methodological epistemologies of musicking. We especially welcome proposals that beckon us to reassess the Shakespearean notion expressed (over)simply by Hamlet that “Brevity is the soul of wit.” We seek to gain insight from approaches conventionally considered a bridge too far, an overpass that extends beyond the desired point, or, if we may, an immoderate viaduct–via techniques such as tautology, employing different words to describe the same concept, using fancy language to pretend you are saying something different when you are really saying the same thing you said before, &/or practices of restating similar concepts through diverse vocabularies. Proposals about tautology will also be considered. We also welcome proposals for lecture recitals, alternatively-formatted sessions, & new renditions/editions of previously presented After-Dark material. As Robert Steven “Adrian” Belew states on the 1981 track “Indiscipline,” “I repeat myself when under stress.”

Some examples…
* Artificial Intelligentsia: Androids, Homogenization, and the Saturation of the Academic Humanities Labor Market
* “Forever and ever”: Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, a Case Study in Choral Echolalia
* “It’s Gonna Rain”: A Jungian Hermeneutic Analysis of Mediated Synchronicity
* Pedagogical Pleonasms: Tautology as a Teaching Tool in the Musicianship Classroom
* Play it Again, Uncle Sam: Sonic Recoil and Historical Reverberances of Wartime Propaganda
* “Right about now, ‘bout now, ‘bout now, ‘bout now”: Temporal Perseveration in Fatboy Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank”
* Rondo Refrain as Rumination, or Loosely(/Poorly) Applying Pop Psychology in Analysis of Well-Trod Western Classical Repertoire to Justify Adding “Popular Studies” to My CV
*Historically Informed Performance Workshop: “Saying the thing a woman already articulately suggested earlier in the meeting, but louder–while existing in a male-presenting body”
* Rhabarberbarbara(-Ann?): A Gastromusicological Lecture Recital

This theme is just a suggestion. We also invite papers that satirize any aspect of music scholarship, so long as they do not cross the line into personal offenses.

Send hate mail & SUBMISSIONS to amsafterdark -at- gmail.com BY October 24.

Follow our Twitter/Blusky @AMSafterdark & see our full CFP at amsafterdark.neocities.org (if/when we ever get around to updating the webpage) or https://bit.ly/amsad2026cfp (if you prefer to read the Chicago Manual of Style for funsies).

Once we have communicated with presenters and have the 2026 PROGRAM assembled/confirmed, we will post it at https://bit.ly/amsad2026program

On behalf of the AMSAD Committee,

Ashley A. Greathouse (she/her/hers)
PhD Musicology | MMus Theory
Visiting Assistant Professor of Music History
University of South Carolina