Call for Presentations

Call for Presentations:

29th Annual Graduate Students in Music (GSIM) Conference

The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)

The students of the Department of Music at The Graduate Center, CUNY, are pleased to announce the 29th Annual GSIM Conference, held on March 6–7, 2026. The conference will be held fully in person for attendees. However, we are offering the option for presenters to share their work virtually via Zoom if they are unable to attend the conference in person. In addition to student presentations, a keynote address will be given by Miriam Piilonen, Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Piilonen’s research interests are far reaching, including the history of music theory, composition and songwriting, electronic music and sound production, and new media studies.  Her 2024 book, Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human, examines the intersection of musical origins and evolutionary thought in the 19th-century evolutionary texts on music. 

We invite graduate students in all disciplines who work on music to submit proposals for presentations relating to the theme of  “Music of, by, and for the People.” This theme takes inspiration from the Graduate Center’s motto – “knowledge is a public good” – and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, encouraging a broad interpretation of how music and music scholarship connects to the public at large. Fruitful topics might include (but are certainly not limited to):

  • Scholarship in non-traditional mediums
  • Musical populism
  • Music and social media
  • Class politics and exclusionary music
  • Public music making and value making
  • Performance in non-traditional venues
  • Music for social movements
  • Music within certain communities
  • Fandom communities in music
  • Music pedagogy and scholarship
  • Music technology and production
  • Music publishing
  • Community/non-professional music-making
  • Relationships between musicians and their public
  • “Art” and “popular” music distinctions
  • Stakeholders in music scholarship
  • Musical accessibility and technology

We are accepting proposals for academic papers and lecture-recitals. Applicants should plan for a 20-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute discussion.

Proposal requirements:

  • Proposals should be no more than 300 words in length. Up to two additional pages of examples/references and/or three minutes of a recording excerpt may be included but are not required. Everything should be compiled together in a single PDF and a single MP3 file. Files should be no bigger than 5 MB.
  • Proposal PDFs must not include the author’s name and should be purged of any indication of the author’s identity. Digital author tags should be removed from the metadata of PDFs.
  • Please indicate at the top of your proposal your preferred modality of presentation (lecture-recital, academic paper, or no preference), as well as a title for the presentation. 
  • Please indicate at the top of your proposal whether you can attend the conference in person or can only present virtually.
  • If you are submitting a proposal featuring a new composition, please include a summary of your planned remarks about your piece (e.g., musical analysis, cultural context, historical framing, etc.).

Proposals should be submitted via email to [email protected]. Please be sure to include your name and institutional affiliation (if any) in the email body when submitting your proposal. The deadline for submission is Monday, January 12th, 11:59 pm EST, 2026. Questions may be addressed to co-chairs Hang Ki Choi and Lindsay Campbell at [email protected].

Information regarding the GSIM Conference at The Graduate Center, CUNY (including a link to this Call for Presentations) can be found online at the conference website: https://gsim.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

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