The annual SEM meeting in Denver is coming up and there are a number of sessions on the latest preliminary program related to Arab music, Islamic traditions, and the Middle East. Here are some to keep an eye out for. (Check back for updates and email Christopher Witulski with any additions or corrections.)

Listings for other days: Thursday, Friday, Sunday

Saturday 8:30 am - 10:30 am

9E: Colorado Ballroom B

Performing Islam Chair: Farzaneh Hemmasi, University of Toronto

  • 8:30 The International Fajr Music Festival: The Politics of Participation, Restrictions, and Musical Identities Mehrenegar Rostami, University of California, Los Angeles

  • 9:00 Reconceiving Shiite Maddahi Rituals: The Emergence of New Religiosities in Iran Hamidreza Salehyar, University of Toronto

  • 9:30 The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Mawlid Celebrations Jon Bullock, University of Chicago

  • 10:00 Trancing with the Children of Pamir: Ismaili Muslim Devotional Music, Cosmopolitan Creativity and Globalized Sufism in Post-Soviet Tajikistan Katherine Freeze, Brown University

9H: Colorado Ballroom G

Sponsored by the Society for Arab Music Research

Popular Culture, Activism, Violence, and the State in Israel/Palestine Chair: David McDonald, Indiana University

  • 8:30 If I Could Go Back in Time: Rethinking Popular Culture, Activism, and the Public Sphere in Palestine David McDonald, Indiana University

  • 9:00 Happy Birthday to Whom?: Israeli Nationhood, Musical Collaboration, and the Exclusionary Semiotics of Bat Shishim Mili Leitner, University of Chicago

  • 9:30 Musical Memory, Animated Amnesia: Traumatic Soundscapes in Waltz with Bashir Michael Figueroa, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  • 10:00 Jowan Safadi’s ‘To Be an Arab’: Music Video from the Disputed Borderlines of Nation, Ethnicity and Class in Israel Nili Belkind, Independent Scholar

Saturday 10:45 am - 12:15 pm

10J: Spruce

  • 11:45 Andalusian Music and Contagion Theory: Transmission within Social and Media Ecologies of Medieval Iberia Jared Holton, University of California, Santa Barbara

Saturday 4:15 pm - 5:45 pm

Colorado Ballroom E & F - Live Video Streaming

The 2017 Charles Seeger Lecture: The Social Space of Music Traditions in Baghdad Before and After Destruction Dr. Scheherazade Qassim Hassan, Research Associate, Department of Music, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; Research Associate, Centre de Recherchr d’Ethnomusicologie at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique and Université Paris Nanterre