ACT Call for Papers: A Word for This Moment Special Issue

A single word can speak to the experience of a time and place. Groovy, cowabunga, oh snap, and sustainability each invoke a particular historical moment and culture. In music education, words such as aesthetic, praxial, modern band, and culturally sustaining pedagogy speak to contextually situated professional trends and values.

More broadly, pervasive words indicate and ultimately restrict what is valued and legitimized within social spheres, creating inclusions and exclusions that can prove detrimental for certain individuals and ways of knowing and being (Foucault, 1980). Words can also become overused, losing their initially disruptive impact. At present, terms like diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice may fall into this category.

In order to avoid complacency and the uncritical propagation of potentially problematic practices, music educators and students might continually reevaluate how their language does and might speak to their current time and place. Is our present moment ambivalent, uncertain, devasting, or joyful? What would it mean for the word love, connectivity, or nihilism to inform teaching and music making?

For this special issue of ACT, authors are invited to center their scholarship on a single uncommon word or short phrase that speaks to what the present historical moment is or could be within music education. Submissions of any length that engage deeply and critically with theory are welcome, but authors may find that this prompt lends itself to shorter form essays of 3,500 to 4,500 words.

Please submit your manuscript as a Word document via e-mail no later than February, 1 2025 to the ACT Editor Lauren Kapalka Richerme at lkricher@iu.edu. Submissions should be formatted following the MayDay Group Publication Style Guide and adhere to ACT’s ethical standards. Please also include a brief abstract (ca. 100–150 words), a short list of keywords, and a 100–150-word biography for each author.

Reference

Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. Pantheon Books.