Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
Use the search bar to search by name or title of paper/session. Note that this search bar does not search by keyword.
Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:55am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Responding to AIDS Session Chair: Dale Disney, University of Tennessee Discussant: Matthew Jones | |
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Sonic Mundanity as a Refusal of ‘Plague Logic:’ How Musical Trans+ Drag Performance Affectively Resists Crisis Narrative Frameworks University of Bristol This paper explores how trans+ drag performers use music to articulate trans+ physicality and sexuality. Using ethnographic material from Bristol’s (U.K) drag scene to highlight music as an affective strategy in grassroots drag, I contrast the mundanity of trans+ embodiment with trans+ bodies in crisis. In public spheres, trans+ bodies are typically presented through crisis narrative frameworks, where they have historically been medicalised, sexualised, and problematised. Queer musical responses to homophobia and transphobia remain central in how crisis is communicated. I situate musical responses to the current trans+ genocide in a queer lineage of musical responses to homophobia and transphobia through an overview of musical responses to the AIDS pandemic, 1981-1996, building on Matthew J. Jones’s work on recorded pop music (2024), Keith C. Ward's work on art-song in The AIDS Quilt Songbook (1999), and scholarship on avant-garde artist Diamanda Galás’s Plague Mass (Gao, AMS annual conference presentation 2025; McClary, 1991.) I demonstrate how music is complicit in societal crisis narratives which demand certain musical features (volume, clarity, repetition) whilst marginalising quieter, affective, and mundane sonic modes of trans+ embodiment and connection. I term this ‘plague logic.’ I argue that reclaiming mundanity as a rich and overlooked sonic register combats the musical restraints of plague logic and challenges dominant frameworks of (mis)understanding trans+ bodies. In drag performance, mundanity is articulated in genre promiscuity, music without symbolic gravitas, affective warmth and intimacy. Plague logic is disrupted through resisting didacticism and symbolic overdetermination. Music becomes a site of radical care. In this paper, I reposition drag as a sonic ecology with multiple modes of embodiment coexisting; through music, drag performance enables privacy in public spheres, intimacy without crossing personal boundaries, strength without heroism. Sound allows trans+ bodies to be present and centred by foregrounding temporal qualities, affective resonance, listening as relational. Where crisis music demands a singular response, mundane music fosters coexistence and community. By centring mundanity within trans+ drag performance, this paper reframes music as a productive site of care and affective value, contributing to broader discussions of how queerly embodied sonic practices resist dominant crisis narratives (Garcia-Mispireta, 2023; Pennington, 2018). | |