Errant Voices: Performances Beyond Measure Day 1

April 29 – April 30, 2022

Co-Organizers: Martha Feldman, Bonnie Gordon, and Kara Keeling

"Errant Voices: Performances Beyond Measure” explores voices that share in an attempt to escape their confines perforce or by choice, taking as its three main case studies trans*, raced, and castrato voices. This two-day, in-person conference will work to make sense of these voices, by turns insurgent and resilient, as ones that defy categorization, appearing at their most revealing in performances that are capacious and open, resisting description, norms, and even ontological certainty. Deborah Vargas (Associate Professor and Henry Rutgers Term Chair in Comparative Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University) will deliver the keynote, "El Grito: The Errant Cries of Mexicanidad.

The complete list of participants, speaker abstracts, conference schedule, and registration link can be found on the conference website. Please note that registration is REQUIRED for attendance, as all events are in-person. Register here.

Day 1 Schedule: Friday, April 29, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

9:00 coffee 

9:30 OPENING - 

• Welcome remarks, Martha Feldman (Department of Music and Committee on Theater and Program Studies, University of Chicago) and Bonnie Gordon (Department of Music, University of Chicago) 

TEMPOS 

Chair, Ruth HaCohen (Department of Musicology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Department of Music, University of Chicago)   

9:45 Introduction, Kara Keeling (Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago)  

9:55 Bonnie Gordon (Department of Music, University of Virginia)

• Syncopated Histories / Castrato Temporalities 

11:00 coffee 

ILLIMITS    

Chair, Judith T. Zeitlin (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Committee on Theater and Performance Studies) 

11:15 Freya Jarman (Department of Music, University of Liverpool) 

• Vexatious Voices: Madness and Other Metaphysical Journeys of Pitch 

11:45 Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson (Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University) 

• Season of Glass: Yoko Ono’s Shatter and Scream 

12:15      David J. Levin (Departments of Germanic Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, Committee on Theater and Performance Studies, and Senior Advisor to the Provost for Arts, University of Chicago), respondent

12:45 lunch 

IMPOSITIONS  

Chair, Travis A. Jackson (Department of Music, University of Chicago) 

2:00 Katherine Crawford (Departments of Gender and Sexuality Studies and History, Vanderbilt University)  

• Race, Castration, and Confusion: An Epistemology of Silence 

2:30 Amy Skjerseth (Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago)  

• Lip Sync vs. the Music Box: Sasha Velour’s Play with Playback in Drag  

3:30 coffee 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS  

4:00 Introduction, Kara Keeling (Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago) 

Deborah Vargas (Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University) 

• El Grito: The Errant Cries of Mexicanidad 

5:30 wine reception   

...

Sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Department of Music, Franke Institute for the Humanities, and Division of the Humanities, with additional support from the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the Office of the Provost, the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies, and the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies and English, together with the University of Virginia’s Religion, Race, & Democracy Lab and Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures.

View the Day 2 Schedule
Learn more about Errant Voices on their website

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