<aside> ⚠️ Your Abstract is pending publication on the event platform.

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<aside> ✔️ Presentation Formats

• Oral presentations should be 20 mins followed by 20 mins for questions.
• Performance presentations can be in the form of a lecture recital or performance with reflection, and should be 20 mins followed by 20 mins for questions.
• Pre-recorded Presentations: Oral or performance presentations can be pre-recorded and submitted as digital media. These should be a maximum of 25 mins**.** Prerecorded  presentations will be available to  view before the event and the full 40 mins of the session will be used for feedback and questions.

Pre-recorded presentations must be submitted by 31st May 2023.

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<aside> ℹ️ What to expect from this event:

• The course platform will go live on Notion on 2nd June. You will receive a link to access all course materials and information. Before the event you will be able to prepare by viewing digital presentations and find out more about other participants .
• Music4Change event is an international, interdisciplinary learning environment where music-focused researchers from a wide range of fields and methods come together to discuss their work and exchange knowledge. When preparing your presentation please consider how to communicate your project with people who may be outside your specific area of study and/or geographical location.
• We encourage active participation, discussion and dialogue during the event, accordingly we hope that contributors will attend the majority of the sessions across the three days. If you plan to only be present for your own presentation, please let us know in advance.
• If you wish to take 3 or 5 ECTS credit points for this event please make sure you register in advance. </aside>

Karin Eriksson Postdoctorial researcher, University of South-Eastern Norway

Embodying Traditions: Exploring Gendered Spaces in Traditional Dance and Music in Norway and Sweden

Keywords: sound-music-dance practices, embodiment, tradition, gender and queer studies

This postdoctoral research project (2023-2026) aims to provide new insights into how gender expectations are embedded within stylistic practices of traditional dance and music, and how queering traditions may open up for new ways for bodies to move, materialise and inhabit space. It explores embodiments and imaginaries of tradition by tracing the pathways of musicians and dancers engaged in contemporary same-sex and gender-neutral traditional dance performances in Norway and in Sweden. Why do performers take part in these events? How is gender and/or queerness enacted through the performing body, musical action and in sound within sites of traditional knowledge production and transmission of dance and music?

Intertwined in the project are the selective processes of shaping traditions, social memories and cultural heritage production. Queerness is here understood in terms of ‘bending’ and rethinking traditions, and challenge normativity (Ahmed 2006: Croft 2017; Barz and Cheng 2019). The project draws mainly on multi-sited fieldwork, interviews with performers and participant observations of performances, social gatherings, festivals and competitions in Norway and in Sweden, and on archival material of 'queer polska' and gender-neutral pedagogy. The results will be presented in four case studies: two for each country. The project aims to fill a gap in previous research, by highlighting queer agencies within traditional communities of traditional music and dance in Sweden, and by covering hitherto unmapped areas of traditional music and dance in Norway.

References

• Ahmed, Sara, Queer Phenomenology. Orientations, Objects and Others (Durham and London: Duke University Press 2006)
• Barz, Gregory and William Cheng eds., Queering the field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
• Croft, Clare ed., Queer Dance. Makings and Meanings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)

About Karin

Karin Eriksson is an ethnomusicologist. She holds a PhD in Musicology from Uppsala University (2017), conducted in collaboration with The Centre of Folk Music and Jazz Research in Stockholm, which includes one semester as ERASMUS PhD student in Ethnomusicology at Royal Holloway, University of London (2014) and as exchange PhD student at Institute of Culture and Memory Research in Ljubljana, Slovenia (2015). She has worked as senior lecturer in Sound and Music Production at Dalarna University and in Musicology at Uppsala University, Linnaeus University and Örebro University and as a researcher at The Centre of Folk Music and Jazz Research in Sweden (2018-2021) and at The Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo (2021-2022).