eSight Community News

We are honored that the theme for the special forum of /The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal /will be disability and music. We implore our potential contributors to show our community's customary fearlessness by casting aside dependence upon the all-too-often oppressive paradigms of music theory, music criticism, and musicology, and by refuting the negative disability stereotypes of popular media (such as the Black-Eyed Peas' "Let's Get Retarded"). Marginalized cultures worldwide have rich, centuries-old musical traditions to draw upon to build community. As in verbal literatures, our community is far too often defined by the dominant culture rather than by ourselves. One problem has been the inability of a broad public to eroticize disability in the manner of "Others." If sex is sexy and race racy, where has that left disability? The nature of the music business has provided few opportunities for broad public venues for disability-positive lyrics and other forms of presentation. While music has often provided employment for blind people worldwide, lyric content has been primarily in response to the demands of sighted audiences.

Traditional academic disciplines in music are cultural institutions that have so far thoroughly excluded or otherwise marginalized people with disabilities. Popular music criticism continues to portray extreme stereotypes of disability as the norm. Our project must be an entirely new paradigm, an authentic, utterly interdisciplinary disability studies of music. Thus, we urge potential contributors, regardless of their fields of training, to articulate their ideas about music and disability through heretofore unimagined and unarticulated means and methods.

Potential contributors to this Special Issue might consider:

1. Is there "disability music" and what is its nature?

2. What is the intersection of music composition and impairment?

3. How have disability and impairment been expressed lyrically?

4. How is disability represented in visual performance by PWD and able-bodied artists?

5. How has disability played a role for people choosing music as a career?

6. What has been/will be the role of technology in enabling universal participation in music?

7. What is the relationship of music with Deaf Culture and deafness?

8. How can music education transcend the limitations of music therapy?

9. How might "mainstream" repertoire (such as the line from Bob Dylan from which our title derives) serve disability culture?

10. What are the heretofore hidden stories of disability that are manifest in mainstream music? (For example, country legend Hank Williams had Spina Bifida.)

11. How does music serve the needs of those whose cognitive, neurological, and emotional disabilities and mental illnesses are rooted in political conflicts, including violent altercations and the threat and implantation of terror tactics?

We welcome contributions from all disciplines as they intersect with issues of disability and music. In the interest of accessibility, we encourage a jargon-free environment and cannot accept articles with examples in music notation. We hope to provide web access to audio examples, but at this time encourage authors to make this optional-only.

Send via email 250-word abstracts, by *(insert date here*) to Guest Editors Alex Lubet (School of Music/Center for Jewish Studies/Program in American Studies, University of Minnesota) lubet001@umn.edu
and Na'ama Sheffi (Communications, Sapir Academic College, Israel)naamash@sapir.ac.il. Please be sure to send abstracts to both editors.

For those abstracts that are selected, we will request completed articles of approximately 3000-5000 words. Note that an invitation to submit an article based on an abstract does not guarantee publication of that article in /The Review of Disability Studies/.

*For more information about /The Review of Disability Studies/, please go to www.rds.hawaii.edu