Scholarly considerations of trauma and disability have evolved largely independently of one another over the past few decades, and yet their various lines of inquiry and close considerations of the human sensorium appear to share a great deal of substantive and meaningful overlap.  Our goal is to bring together artists and scholars whose work concerns music and trauma and/or disability studies in order to identify these areas of overlap, and to open up necessary dialogues between people who may be engaging with similar kinds of questions using different but complementary sets of  tools.  By coming together to understand the intersections between trauma and disability studies more vividly, this event will seek to develop frameworks that can be flexibly shared by scholars in music studies and other related fields, especially given the complex intertwining of disability and trauma that characterizes so much of human life today.

“Theorizing Trauma and Disability in Music Studies" will be held in person with hybrid remote access on February 7-9, 2025.  The conference will take place in the fully ADA-accessible Schoenberg Music Building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles.  All presentations and performances will be livestreamed online, as well as in designated quiet spaces that will be open to attendees at all times.

Event registration will open on December 16, 2024.

This program is made possible by the Joyce S. and Robert U. Nelson Fund. Robert Uriel Nelson was a revered musicologist and music professor at UCLA, who, together with his wife, established a generous endowment for the university to make programs like this possible.