Call for Contributions: Illustrated Sheet Music

De la part de Sophie Aymès, Université de Bourgogne

Call for contributions: Illustrated Sheet Music: Case Studies, 1850-1930

This volume will explore the history, context, graphic design, and theory of illustrated sheet music in the United States and the Atlantic/Anglophone world from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Topics might include specific case studies of themes (such as war, New York, London, class, transportation, health, etc.), artists/illustrators (such as Winslow Homer, James A.M. Whistler, E.T. Paull, or Edward Pfeiffer), composers, lyricists, performers, music publishing companies, or modes of production, distribution, reception, communication, consumption, and social history. Additional subject possibilities include image/lyrics relationships; technological innovations; class, race, gender, and/or ethnicity; modernism; the interplay of illustration, design, and fine art in American visual culture; the labor, practice, and economics of music cover illustration; the collection of sheet music (buyers, donors, fans); and the role of archives, libraries, historical societies, and museums in collecting, cataloguing, preserving and exhibiting sheet music.

Papers are welcome from those in Art History, History, Visual and Material Culture Studies, American Studies, consumer studies, book arts, childhood studies, literary criticism, media studies, and more.

  • We welcome proposals for essays of 5,000-7,500 words, inclusive of footnotes, with a maximum of 10-12 images.
  • Essays may be original unpublished material or versions of previously published scholarship, given that permission to reproduce is provided by the original publisher.
  • Accepted authors will be responsible for securing high-resolution images and reproduction permissions (when necessary) for their illustrations.

Submission: please send an abstract of 500-words or fewer, plus a curriculum vitae—and/or address any questions—to both editors. Proposals should be received by April 21. Notification of acceptance will be given by May 1. Manuscript drafts will be due Sept. 1, 2023.

Co-editors:

Theresa Leininger-Miller, University of Cincinnati

Kenneth Hartvigsen, Brigham Young University

theresa.leininger@uc.edu       kenneth_hartvigsen@byu.edu