Organized by the Childhood and Youth Study Group.
This session will showcase the work of graduate students and early-career scholars in the field of music and childhood. The format will be non-traditional, combining reports on current research with presentations on public musicology and pedagogy relating to music for, by, about, and with children and youth. Projects presented in this session range from established methods of historical research to projects situated in schools and classrooms (including those in higher education), digital spaces for research and exhibition, and venues beyond the academy as sites of teaching, play, and collaborative learning. To illuminate both the musical construction of childhood and young people’s participation in musical meaning-making, our presenters enter into conversation with sources that include the conventional archive and musical text, material culture and ephemera, records of children’s reception of music, children’s books and literature, children’s film and media, and video games. Dissertations, postdoctoral research, first book projects, student teaching, and scholarship oriented toward public and community objectives are the wellsprings of this exciting new work in the burgeoning field of music and critical childhood studies. Through peer-mentoring and modeling, presenters will benefit from sharing work with each other, as well as with attendees in the ensuing discussion.
The featured research projects pose questions about the roles of childhood, memory, and nostalgia in national and institutional practices. Demetrius Shahmehri will examine Brahms’s “Heimweh” Lieder as representations of remembered, lost childhood space, innovatively using the concept of “unrevisitable locations” from video games to analyze their nostalgic imaginings. The musical construction of childhood in these songs symbolizes the classical tradition, for Brahms, a similarly “absent and omnipresent” memory. Ala Krivov will draw on her research in children’s music of the US in the 1950s to share how ’This Land Is Your Land’ was embraced as a patriotic children’s song despite the original sarcastic or skeptical intent. Ala argues that this way of interpreting an implicit ideological critique aligned with the longstanding American idea of progress through overcoming; an idea which was introduced by the Puritanical political sermons (jeremiads) in the seventeenth century and which was prospering in the mid-twentieth century. Trevor Nelson focuses on the teaching of British national identity via music during the decline of the British Empire, examining primary sources and evidence of reception among children to show how Britain’s place in the global order was presented through muddled messaging in a time of transition from Empire to Commonwealth.
Research into music, childhood, and institutions intersects with innovations in pedagogy and public musicology. Hannah Neuhauser will discuss her public musicology project, "The Hums of Pooh," alongside the design and launch of the Childhood Music Database and a newly approved course, the Child in Music Spaces. These projects are aimed at promoting childhood music studies beyond academia and engaging with play for pedagogical purposes. Carrie Danielson will share the trajectory of her work on Scandinavian music and dance, discussing her book project on refugee children’s perspectives on music and arts education in Sweden, as well as her postdoctoral project on young people's participation in Scandinavian music and dance in the Upper Midwest.
The presentations will be followed by discussion, opening the conversation to our membership of all career stages and carrying into our business meeting, which will address the ongoing activities of our group, such as a our syllabus exchange, dissertation workshop, reading group, and podcast in light of the connections made during the session.
