The International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS) and Metal Music Studies-Spain, in collaboration with the University of Seville, the Complutense University of Madrid, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the University of Granada, the University of Córdoba, the University of Jaén, the University of Oviedo, and the University of La Laguna, invites applications in response to the Call for Proposals 2025 for ISMMS’ 7th Biennial International Research Conference. The event will be held in Seville, Spain, 3-6 June, 2025 (and virtually) under the theme:

 NEW METAL WORLDS 

BUILDING BRIDGES AND MENDING BROKEN BACKS

Justification

The city of Híspalis, Isbiliya, or Seville, in its different historical denominations —Roman, Arab, and Christian— is hosting the ISSMS’ 7Th Biennial International Conference in 2025. Seville, with its geopolitical enclave throughout the centuries, as well as the long tradition of cultural and religious crossbreeding, offers us an ideal historical-symbolic framework. Likewise, evoking a series of metaphors in tone to the convergence of worlds inspire and nourishes the thematic of the Conference, inviting a continuation around the critical reflection within the studies of music and metal cultures in the different territories of the North and South.

Metal studies have achieved a vertiginous development during the last decades. As a multidisciplinary field in expansion, its production encompasses a plethora of themes, approaches, methodologies, and exploratory possibilities that few other fields of knowledge offer. Since its origins, we have witnessed profound changes and transformations in metal music. The sonority, the themes that concern it, the instrumentalization, and even the forms of artistic activism have been modified over time. In recent years, metal studies have witnessed the opening of multiple perspectives of analysis with the observance of proposals from the Global South. 

 ISMMS 2025 Conference is proposed as an incentive space for the exchange of ideas, dialogue, and critical reflection on the borders, crossings, interstices, and relational spirals —inter and transdisciplinary, epistemological, methodological, pedagogical, social, cultural, and artistic— between the different agents and territories within metal studies. In this sense, this Conference focuses its interest on the frontiers, bridges, and transits that announce a crossing towards possible New Metal Worlds. Thus, the Conference aims to encourage critical reflection as the axis and rudder of a series of thematic lines leading to the production of strategic studies within the field: a) hybridisms (borders and bridges), b) alterities (broken backs), c) spirals and rhizomes (fleet systems and non-summary relations), and d) new metal worlds (ports and crossings).

The topics we seek include

 (but are not limited to):

a) Hybridisms: Borders and Bridges

Transexplorations of knowledge, epistemologies, disciplines, languages, pedagogies, and/or methodological processes within metal studies, territories, and metal cultures.

Heterotopias and metal territories.

Musicality and metal movements in a transhumant and nomadic historical key.

Bridges between musical analysis and metal studies: sonic representations of new worlds. 

Global border system, coloniality, and its repercussions on metal cultures, economies, industries, imaginaries, and territories.

Mestizations, hybridisms, and bastardies in the metallic cultural and artistic manifestations.

Subaltern knowledge and border thinking; manifestations and incorporations within the metal.

Metallic diaspora; practices and manifestations.

Resistance, activism, social justice, and restorative actions with a situated perspective in metal music and culture.

Bridges between and for an activated academy, an artistic activism, and a reflexive art.

b) Alterities: Broken Backs

Errant travelers: Becomings, transformations, and transpositions in creative expressions within metal and its agents.

“Wrong” bodies: Agents and problematics of gender, race, disability, sexuality, age, class, nationality, religion, ethnicity, etc., within metal.

Intruders: Representations, influences, and permeabilities between foreign agents and metal studies, music, and cultures.

“Wet” backs: Border and diasporic agents in metal.

c) Spirals and Rhizomes: Fleet Systems and Non-summary Relations

Relational confabulations between metal studies and music agents.

Practices of responsibility and commitment from the academy with its local scenes.

Extrapolations and interventions from metal studies to communities and/or other areas of knowledge.

Methodological, procedural, technological, and/or artistic innovations for research in metal studies.

Creative processes and dialogic spirals within metal cultures.

Memories and politics of care in metal music.

Affections; perspectives of analysis from the affective and sensorial turn.

d) New Metal Worlds: Ports and Crossings

(These are contributions in and from music and metal studies that inaugurate, among other possible ones, some of the fictions, narratives, or proposals listed below)

Fantasy speculations between-worlds

Relational ecologies and holistic cosmologies

Post-pandemic (metallic) worlds and sounds

Cyberspatial transits

Cyborg and post-human fabulations

Emergency re-existences

Shuttles of immemorials

Radical tendernesses

Symbiont and aliens’ acuerpamientos (protect-support-huddles)

Altered cartographies

MORE DETAILS

The Conference will be in hybrid format, in-person and virtually.

Sing Up to submit abstracts (English/Spanish) maximum of 600 words through this web.

The deadline for submission is the 30th of September, 2024.

Presentations will be accepted in both traditional academic work and arts-based research formats (i.e., video essay, film, music, performance, art-graphic, collage, comic, illustration, and photography).

Students, early career, independent scholars, and people from stigmatized groups (i.e., women, racialized, LGTBIQ+) are encouraged to submit abstracts.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 2025.

Inquiries in:

info@ismmsconferencespain.org

Conference Registration Fees 

In-person attendees with presentation: 150 euros

Virtual attendees with presentation: 120 euros

In-person attendees with presentation from the Global South: 80 euros

Virtual attendees with presentation from the Global South: 50 euros

In-person attendees without presentation: 60 euros 

Virtual attendees without presentation: 30 euros 

In-person attendees without presentation from the Global South: 40 euros 

Virtual attendees without presentation from the Global South:  15 euros 

The fees includes free access to the closing ceremony and dinner for in-person attendees.

Registration for the conference and virtual workshops will open on January 31, 2025.