CFP (Anthology): Rock and Romanticism

CFP: Rock and Romanticism

NOTES: 

1. I have set up a blog dedicated to the Rock and Romanticism anthology: https://rockandromanticism.wordpress.com/. When this page is no longer pinned to the top of this blog, all future updates on the anthology will have been migrated to that location. 

2. The August 1st deadline for proposals has passed. However, I plan to send my first proposal out to a publisher by August 15th at the latest, so I can still accept proposals through August 8th. Please contact me by August 8th if you have an idea but cannot send me a proposal until after August 8th.

3. This page is continually being updated as I receive proposals or ideas for proposals. Please check the list below for topics covered. I am happy to accept more than one essay about the same figure, but of course these essays need to take different approaches. 

4. I was on the road from July 5th to July 14th. There may have been delays responding to your queries and proposals during that time. Please accept my apologies.  

The editor of Rock and Romanticism is soliciting essays about the ways in which rock music, broadly defined, expands, interprets, restates, and conflicts with Romanticism, broadly defined. “Rock music” as a category will be extended to include all popular music since the 1950s, including but not limited to rock, varieties of metal, R&B, soul, varieties of punk, folk, techno, progressive rock, indie, new wave, alternative, psychedelic, industrial, gothic, funk, country, and blues. If the music has been written or performed since the 1950s and you’re wondering if it fits, the answer is “yes.” [1] For the purposes of this study, “Romanticism” will also be broadly defined, considering trans-European, trans-Atlantic, and global Romanticisms as well as Romanticism in literature, art, and music.

You can see a list matching potential musicians and Romantic-era literary figures, a provisional bibliography, and a sense of how I’m theorizing Romanticism on the blog post “Romanticism and Rock.”

Papers might consider

• women in rock and women in Romanticism;
• lyric poetry and song lyrics or song lyrics as lyric poetry;
• readings of rock and Romanticism that compare
  • conditions between Europe during the Napoleonic wars and conditions in the post-McCarthy era and/or post 9-11 United States,
  • the 1960s or later Ireland or the UK, or
  • 1960s or later continental Europe, including Eastern Europe and the Baltic states (any possible essays on Rammstein and Romanticism?);
• the gothic in literature and in music;
• opera and the rock opera;
• drug use, drug literature, and drug music of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries;
• the pastoral in Romantic literature and in rock music;
• adaptations, interpretations, direct responses to, and performances of Romantic-era texts by twentieth-century and later musicians;
• the figure of Satan in Romanticism and in rock;
• protest literature and protest music;
• sexual identity in Romanticism and rock.

Ideal papers will theorize or historicize their subjects in a way that places rock music in a coherent dialog with Romantic-era art, literature, or music, contributing to a consideration of the boundaries or definition(s) of “Romanticism” as an artistic mode while also considering the implications of chronological, national, social, sexual, and/or economic difference. Papers from contemporary artists/musicians reflecting upon the influence of Romantic-era art, literature, or music upon their work are also welcome.

Please email a 250-500 word proposal that includes your name, title, institutional affiliation (if applicable), mailing address, email address, and a brief, updated CV to jamesrovira@gmail.com by August 1st, 2015. Completed papers, which should be within the 5000-7000 word range, are expected by November 15, 2015.

You can see a list of artists and poets with a provisional bibliography on the blog post “Romanticism and Rock.”

I have received notice of interest or proposals for the following figures:

Musician/Artist	Romantic Era Connection	Status
The Beatles/Sgt. Pepper’s	Wordsworth	Proposal received and accepted
David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust	Blake and Keats	Proposal received and accepted
David Bowie and Brian Eno (late 70s)	Wordsworth/Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads	Proposal received and accepted
Nick Cave	Romanticism/gothic and sublime	Awaiting proposal
Nick Cave	Romanticism/transgressive artist	Proposal received and accepted
60s Dylan (not comprehensively)	Blake and the Beat poets	Proposal received and accepted
Dylan	Keats and Shelley, or just Shelley	Proposal received and accepted
Woody Guthrie, Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti	Theorizes Guthrie’s ballads using Sayre and Lowy’s “Figures of Romantic Anti-Capitalism”	Proposal received and accepted.
The Herd (early Peter Frampton), perf. Paradise Lost	Milton and Blake	Proposal received and accepted.
Mick Jagger, 1969	Jagger reading Shelley’s Adonais	Proposal received and accepted
Iron Maiden	Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”	Awaiting proposal
Aimee Mann	Mann as a Romantic figure as theorized by Cavill	Proposal received and accepted
Marilyn Manson’s Triptych	Blake and Bryon	Proposal received and accepted
Morrisey and Bowie	Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein	Proposal received and accepted
Norwegian Black Metal	Primitivism/return to nature	Awaiting proposal
The Pretenders, Pretenders	William Blake, Vision of the Daughters of Albion, comparing female responses to male aggression and passivity.	Proposal received and accepted.
Martha Redbone’s Roots Project	William Blake	Proposal received and accepted
Lou Reed, The Raven	Edgar Allan Poe	Proposal received and accepted
Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil”	Milton’s Satan	Awaiting proposal
Rush	Rush and Romanticism	Proposal received and accepted
U2, Songs of Innocence	Blake	Proposal received and accepted
U2, Songs of Innocence and Leonard Cohen	Blake	Proposal received and accepted
Van Morrison	VM himself as a Romantic poet, comp. to several Romantic-era figures, particularly Blake	Proposal received and accepted
Various: the 60s	Various: the 60s as a Romantic era	Proposal received and accepted
Various: 60’s era apocalypse	Various: the Romantic era and apocalypse	Proposal received and accepted
Various: 80s New Romanticism	Various: English Romanticism	Proposal received and accepted
Various: a contribution by the author/director of a staged version of Werther set to music by Lou Reed, Florence and the Machine, Rhianna, etc.	Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther	Proposal received and accepted.
Various: Pathetic fallacy in rock and Romanticism. AFI, Finch, La Dispute, etc.	Various: Blake and Wordsworth	Proposal received and accepted
Various: songs of the open road, including Joplin, Springsteen, Dylan, and Berry	Various: Songs for the Open Road anthology	Proposal received and accepted
Tom Verlaine/ post-punk	Romantic-era responses to Napoleon	Proposal received and accepted
Women in Rock (Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Stevie Nicks)	Women in Romanticism (Mary Shelley and Charlotte and Emily Brontë)	Proposal received and accepted
Neil Young and Jackson Browne	These musicians as Romantic poets, compared to Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats	Proposal received and accepted
4AD Records’s This Mortal Coil project (includes The  Cocteau Twins)	Walpole, Beckford, Shelley and Lewis	Proposal received and accepted

[1] Except for disco, because disco sucks.