Conference Agenda

The Online Program of events for the 2025 AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.

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Session Overview
Session
SMT Plenary: Queering the Pitch—Thirty Years On
Time:
Saturday, 08/Nov/2025:
4:30pm - 6:00pm

Session Chair: Stephan Pennington, Tufts University
Presenter: James Currie, University at Buffalo
Presenter: Nadine Hubbs, University of Michigan
Presenter: Vivian Luong, University of Oklahoma
 Location: Nicollet Ballroom C-D
Session Topics:
SMT

Session Abstract

Queering the Pitch was published in 1994. In a decade marked by the extraordinary sea changes initiated by the “new musicology,” it was an important milestone. The music disciplines in the Anglo-American world and beyond have never quite been the same since. Today work that takes place under the aegis of “queer” is, as a result, much more normal. And yet in the turmoil of the present global political scene it is increasingly the case that being queer, thinking in a queer fashion, and pursuing queer topics are again under duress. 

 

The members of this plenary panel take this historical perspective as a starting point for thinking about what it might mean for us all, but for music theory particularly, still to be involved in the endeavor of queering the pitch. What might it mean to talk of a queer music theory? To what degree is this a particular concern of music theorists who are themselves queer? Is a queer music theory simply one that studies queer topics? Or is it less about our objects of study and more about our modes of doing so? To what degree then is music theory itself inherently queer? Or even life in the academy per se? What hopes, dreams, aspirations, and worries attend being queer in academic disciplines at a time when it is potentially dangerous to do so? And where do we go from here?