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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.)

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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, 02:59:01am EDT

Daily Overview

Session

Film Music Franchises
Session Chair: Shannon Draucker
Discussant: Berthold Hoeckner

Presentation 3

Eros, Phillia, and the Bittersweet: The Love Topic in the Music for Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

Laura McTavish

University of Kansas,

Few moments in Star Wars have sparked as much confusion and outrage as the kiss between Rey and Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker (2019). The potential romance between Rey and Kylo Ren—dubbed “Reylo” by supporters—sparked major fan debate, with opponents countering by coining the term “Reyno.” Central to this rift is John Williams’s music for the saga. As I demonstrate, Williams’s scores throughout the saga have represented romance with a distinct musical language, but his music for this kiss was entirely different. The music for love (eros) in the original and prequel trilogies is rather straightforward accompanying more typical couplings of Han and Leia and Padmé and Anakin. However, the sequel trilogy leans more heavily into sentimentality and nostalgia than the first six films ever did. Because of this, other types of love are brought forward: familial love (storge) and platonic love (philia), among others. The "Reylo" kiss is therefore an excellent case study into how various types of love can be scored simultaneously.

My analysis will center around the newly emerging discourse on the Love topic in film. Despite the extensive use of the Love topic throughout western art music, concrete research on its characteristics is lacking. Three publications from the last fifteen years have attempted to rectify this gap within film: Rebecca Fülöp’s dissertation (2012), Daniel Obluda’s dissertation (2021), and most recently, Tom Schneller and Táhirih Motazedian’s article, “Tugging at Heartstrings: Bittersweet Harmonies in the Classic Hollywood Love Theme.” Through this analysis I will introduce several new subsets of the Love topic, expanding it from its roots in eros to encompass many other types of love. By situating the “Reylo” kiss within William’s broader musical language for love, I argue that the cue destabilizes conventional markers of cinematic eros and instead blends romantic, familial, and sacrificial signifiers. In doing so, it expands the expressive scope of the Love topic in film and offers a more nuanced framework for understanding how multiple forms of love can be scored simultaneously.