Music and World War II (edited volume)
Edited by Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Pamela Potter
Deadline: June 15, 2015 (submission of proposals)

The editors are in preliminary negotiations with Ashgate Press for a collection of essays provisionally entitled Music and World War II, envisioned as the inaugural volume for a projected series on Music and War, and we would like to invite chapter proposals for this volume.

Even before the recent outpouring of commemorative work on World War I, studies such as Proof through the Night by Glenn Watkins had shown that it was ambitious yet possible to survey the musical response to the Great War across geographic boundaries. The Second World War, while a far more familiar event in the popular consciousness, has eluded such comprehensive treatment. This was not only because the war itself engulfed a larger span of the globe, but because the nature of musical production, dissemination, and consumption had so radically transformed by the time of the latter conflict. To investigate the role of music in World War II, it no longer suffices to employ traditional musicological methods of examining art music scores or even sheet music, because the response to this war did not inspire the same sort of creativity among composers and poets to produce heroic and patriotic tributes, as was previously the case. Annegret Fauser’s groundbreaking study on music and the Second World War in the United States set out a new direction for understanding the “sonic experience of war,” pointing to the numerous ways in which music was employed for war-related tasks in films, posters, books, newspapers, in addition to radio, film, and live performance.  Our goal is to apply these insights to a global and multi-media examination of the music of World War II.  Instead of concentrating primarily on music commissioned for or inspired by military endeavors, we intend to look even more to a wide range of media, where we find that a prevailing tone of escapism has largely replaced the lofty, solemn, heroic, and celebratory mode of “war music” of the past.

The editors intend to produce an interdisciplinary volume that will reach readers in a number of fields and welcome abstracts (and eventually essays) that avoid overly specialized language.

If you’d like to be considered for inclusion in this book,  send 1) a proposal of between 350 and 500 words outlining the main topic(s) and methodologies of your study, including a provisional title; and 2) a brief professional biography to the editors roberta-marvin@uiowa.edu and pmpotter@wisc.edu. The deadline for consideration is June 15, 2015.