Conference Agenda

While music theory as a discipline has had a long historical life and is widely accepted as an academic field, music cognition is only still in the nascent stages of establishing a foothold in the academy. Though the properties of sound, sound perception, and psychoacoustic work can be traced back to Greek antiquity, music cognition as a field was “established” academically between the 1950-60s, most concretely after Leonard Meyer’s seminal book, Emotion and Meaning in Music. However, with nearly 75 years of foundational study and work, the field continues to be somewhat othered and minoritized within the larger Society of Music. This panel seeks to discuss the ways in which this minoritization of music cognition is, in some sense, gendered. Our invited panelists will discuss some broader ideas related to this outsider status, including:

• Do particular methodologies, such as positivist analysis, qualitative vs. quantitative analysis, behavioral work, computational or data-based analysis, or neuroscientific methods, have a gendered skew in who practices?
• "How does the field of music cognition define and operationalize gender, and what impact does this have on studies' purported findings?"
• Can and should music cognition be included in a core curriculum for music theory, and if so, how?
• When do students hoping to specialize in music cognition gain the requisite skills, if ever? In what ways is this gendered, and can a parallel be drawn to the way women and gender minorities have historically been discouraged from pursuing scientific fields?
• Why are music cognition studies often housed within cognitive science or psychology departments rather than music departments?
• Why do music cognition researchers need to have one foot in music theory disciplinarily?
• How do you go about creating a lab and recruiting students? How do you retain students, how do you recruit for particular skillsets?
• How does this gender bias impact the more specific field of music cognition or who practices?