Nostalgia, Music and Music Studies

 

a program of online events, 2022

 

Image credit: Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

Nostalgia, Music and Music Studies Conference

Although forever inaccessible, the past tempts us precisely because it seems fixed and immovable. As David Lowenthal elucidates “…we feel quite sure that the past really happened, that its traces and memories reflect irrefutable scenes and acts. The flimsy future may never arrive; man or nature may destroy all; time may terminate. But the securely tangible past is seemingly fixed, indelible, unalterable.” One of the primary ways individuals and communities engage with the past is through nostalgia. As Svetlana Boym reminds us:

…nostalgia goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time – the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.

Boym’s work has proven to be foundational for nostalgia studies, creating a theoretical framework that moves across several disciplines.

This conference aims to bring Boym’s work and nostalgia studies more broadly into conversation with music and music studies. As a theoretical framework, nostalgia studies allows us to explore attitudes towards the past underlying both musicology and music composition/performance. It illuminates the ways nostalgia is used by creators and audiences, as well as the ways it affects and influences our perceptions of history, heritage, self and other. Guided by the work of Boym and others on nostalgia types (restorative vs reflective, individual vs. collective memory), this conference aims to bring scholars and artists together to deepen our understanding of nostalgia’s powerful presence in music and music making.

Presented by the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities, in collaboration with co-organizers Elizabeth Randell Upton (UCLA) and Caitlin Vaughn Carlos (University of Redlands).

Schedule of Events at a Glance

Day 1: April 21, 2022
“Performing Jewish Music: Nostalgia, Tradition, and Innovation”
Zoom, 11am-12:30pm PT
  • Panelists: Jessica Roda (Georgetown University), Michael Beckerman (New York University), Joshua Dolgin (Composer and Performer)
  • Moderator: Mark Kligman (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
“Nostalgia and the Television Musical”
Zoom, 2pm-3:30pm PT
  • Panelists: Raymond Knapp (UCLA), Tom Hanslowe (UCLA), Danielle Stein (UCLA)
  • Moderator: Holley Replogle-Wong (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
Day 2: April 22, 2022
“Counter Nostalgias”
Zoom, 10am-11:30am PT
  • Panelists: Elissa Harbert (DePaw University), Stephen Turner (University of Georgia), Elizabeth Emery (University of Bristol)
  • Moderator: Elizabeth Upton (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
“Troubling Classical Music’s Nostalgias”
Zoom, 1pm-3pm PT
  • Panelists: Jörg Holzmann (Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland), Arlan Vriens (University of Toronto), Tim Cochran (Eastern Connecticut State University), John Gabriel (University of Melbourne)
  • Moderator: Raymond Knapp (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
“Heritage and Identity”
Zoom 4pm-6pm PT
  • Panelists: Hannah Standiford (University of Pittsburgh), David Wilson (University of Southern California), Ashley Dao (UCLA), Kian Ravaei (UCLA)
  • Moderator: Caitlin Vaughan Carlos (University of Redlands)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
Day 3: April 23, 2022
“Nostalgia for Different Pasts”
Zoom 10am-12pm
  • Panelists: Sara Gulgas (University of Arizona), Elizabeth Randell Upton (UCLA), Ross Mitchell (UCLA), Julin Lee (University of Munich)
  • Moderator: Gillian Gower (University of Denver)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
Day 4: May 3, 2022
“Nostalgia and European Music Histories”
Zoom, 10am-12pm PT
  • Panelists: Jennifer Saltzstein (University of Oklahoma), Marie Sumner Lott (Georgia State University), Demetrius Shahmehri (Columbia University), Emily Laurance (Oberlin College and Conservatory)
  • Moderator: Elizabeth Upton (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
“Theories of Nostalgia”
Zoom, 1pm-3pm PT
  • Panelists: Jessica Schwartz (UCLA), Vincent Rone (UCLA), Caitlin Vaughn Carlos (University of Redlands), Tristan Paré-Morin (University of Ottawa)
  • Moderator: Elizabeth Upton (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
Day 5: May 5, 2022
“Rock Nostalgias”
Zoom 9:45am-11:15am PT
  • Panelists: John Sheinbaum (University of Denver), Joshua Duchan (Wayne State University), Caitlin Vaughn Carlos (University of Redlands)
  • Moderator: Tiffany Naiman (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
“Trauma and Nostalgia in/for WWII”
Zoom 11:30am-1pm PT
  • Panelists: Siv B. Lie (University of Maryland, College Park), Jay Grymes (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
  • Moderator: Danielle Stein (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration
“Queer Nostalgias”
Zoom 2pm-3:30pm PT
  • Panelists: Jordan Hugh Sam (UCLA), Kristin Franseen (Concordia University), Mitchell Morris (UCLA)
  • Moderator: Tiffany Naiman (UCLA)
  • Link to Zoom Registration

Symposium Sponsors

UCLA Center for Musical Humanities and the Joyce S. and Robert U. Nelson Fund

The Center for Musical Humanities is dedicated to advancing the interests of music and the humanities across the whole of UCLA, engaging its faculty, students, and surrounding communities in a series of events that will bring together scholarship, performance, and outreach.

The mission of the center is to foster the study of music within an interdisciplinary context by bringing together scholars and students in a variety of disciplines from around the nation and world to collaborate with scholars and students at UCLA and its associated communities, and to create an effective and vibrant face for the Herb Alpert School of Music by fostering public musical events inspired by its scholarly ventures, featuring faculty and students from across the school.

Musicologists study the history, cultural contexts, and interpretation of music. While the discipline has tended, historically, to focus largely on European art-music repertories, in recent decades it has expanded to include many other traditions as well as other regions. The Department of Musicology at UCLA now leads the field nationally and internationally in offering advanced training within this broader vision of the discipline and is a recognized leader in the study of popular music, the study of music, power, and difference, and in innovative approaches to the study of traditional repertories and musical practices.

THANK YOU