It is our pleasure to invite you to London for the Ninth International Conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). The local organizers are Robert Samuels, of the Department of Music at The Open University, and Delia da Sousa Correa, of the Department of English at The Open University. The conference is held in association with The Institute of Musical Research, The Institute of English Studies, and the Literature and Music Research Group of The Open University.
The conference will be organized into three sections, the first being devoted to the primary theme of “Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music”. The second section, “Surveying the Field”, involves papers that deal with general theoretical and methodological questions intrinsic to the established scholarly field of Word and Music Studies. The conference will also include a section of “Word and Music Studies Working Papers”. This section will include shorter papers which reflect work-in-progress in the field of Word and Music Studies. A total of nearly fifty participants from around the world will give papers and recitals over the four days of the conference, and we are confident that like previous conferences of the Association, this will be another significant event in the field.
Follow this link for futher details about the conference, including the conference schedule and abstracts and information about how to book a place.
Previous international conferences, on Music and Literature in the 19th and 20th centuries and on Literature and Music in the Study of Culture, were hosted under the then Musics and Cultures Research. A conference on Purcell, Handel and Literature was held in November, 2009 and and an interdisciplinary symposium on Don Juan in September 2011.
Members of the OU Literature and Music Research Group have contributed to a number of related conferences outside the OU, including ‘Words and Notes in the Nineteenth-Century’ held at the Institute of Musical Research in July, 2007, ‘Victorian Soundscapes’ held in Leeds in March 2007 and the Royal Musical Association Conference on 'Boundaries' in London in July 2010. Several members of the OU Research Group are also members of the International Words and Music Association, whose most recent conference was held in in Santa Fe in August 2011. The OU Literature and Music Research Group will host the ninth international conference of the WMA, Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music, in London in August 2013.