Music and Religion Unit
The Music and Religion section is perpetually interested in panels that combine performance and scholarly reflection, and/or book panel discussions that help to advance the field. These ideas can be incorporated into any of the other ideas below.
- Music as a tool of religious violence and/or music as a tool of religious healing
- Indigenous religious musics from around the World
- Religious Music at the Borderlands and/or Religious Music and Immigration
- Musical representations of religion in children's media (e.g. Disney films)
- Music in American Buddhism (esp. related to Buddhist Churches of America)
- Anniversary-themed presentations surrounding musical works and music scene
This panel focuses on the role of words and music in Sikh activism. It seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of musical agency as a catalyst for social change within the Sikh community and the Sikh tradition. Papers are invited at the intersection of language, music and activism to include, but not limited to historical perspectives, linguistic and musical analysis, socio-cultural impact and interdisciplinary approaches including musicology, linguistics, sociology, and other disciplines.
The discipline of religious studies has expanded beyond linguistic rationality to include the importance of musical phenomena in the development of religious communities and religious consciousness. Meanwhile, theological aesthetics is moving beyond the textual to include music as a resource in its own right for constructive and transformative meaning-making. Music, religiously speaking, is no mere adjunct to the study of sacred space, ritual, visual art, liturgy, or philosophical aesthetics; rather, it is a distinct field in its own right — with its own particular content, methods, and norms. By placing the relationship between music and religion at the center of our endeavor, this Unit seeks to serve scholars who operate out of this ubiquitous, but ironically unrepresented, realm of academic pursuit within the guild.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Alisha L. Jones, Indiana University,… | jonesall@indiana.edu | - | View |
| Joshua Busman | joshua.busman@uncp.edu | - | View |