Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the SEM 2026 Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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: 29th Aug 2026, 08:47:56pm EDT
|
Daily Overview |
| Session | |
|
10K: Forbidden Voices, Resonant Resistance: Music, Gender, and Politics in Iran Location: State Room East | |
| Presentation 2 | |
Resonant Resistance: Sonic Agency, Gender, and the Re-sounding of Sacred Spaces in Iran Cornell University This presentation examines women's resistance in contemporary Iranian public space, focusing on the dome of the Shah Mosque in Isfahan. It explores this symbolic structure, celebrated since the Safavid era as an architectural masterpiece and acoustic space designed to amplify religious sounds and male religious authority, and argues that this site has become an important stage for sonic and political resistance. Drawing on how recent actions, particularly women singing beneath this dome and circulating videos on social media, have transformed the space's symbolic meaning and traditional function, this presentation demonstrates how these performances, which directly challenge the post-1979 restrictions on women's public singing, are not merely artistic acts but constitute a socio-political gesture. Methodologically, this research analyzes the Shah Mosque dome not as an architectural structure, but as an active medium whose acoustic properties have become a tool for resistance, allowing historically excluded voices to resonate. This qualitative study is positioned at the interdisciplinary intersection of ethnomusicology, sound studies, spatial theory, gender studies, and media studies. It draws on an interview, autoethnography, analysis of sonic-spatial situations, and a case study of a widely circulated social media performance. The theoretical framework builds on Brandon LaBelle's concept of "Sonic Agency," showing how sound becomes a tool for resistance and negotiation with systems of domination, and is extended through Laudan Nooshin's work on Iranian musical cyberspace to account for the online dimension of these performances. | |
