CFP: ARSC Annual Conference and Workshop

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is seeking proposals for presentations, posters, and panels for its 56th annual conference to be held virtually from May 18-21, 2022. Proposals are due by January 31, 2022.

Although the 2022 conference will be online, the program committee has selected Detroit, Michigan as its virtual host city. ARSC welcomes proposals for presentations, panels, and posters on any aspect of sound recording. In recognition of the host city, the committee especially encourages presentations across all genres and eras that highlight composers, broadcasters, musicians, performers, record labels, studios, songwriters, and personalities from the Midwest region of the United States.

Since the online platform for the 2022 conference also offers opportunities for global participation, the committee invites sound recording scholars, collectors, preservationists, and creators to engage in a broad range of topics that cross geographic, cultural, and collection boundaries. ARSC seeks presentations and panels that are informative, display a passion for their subjects, and include compelling audio and/or audiovisual content.

In addition, the program committee seeks proposals pertaining to:

• Discographies, record label and/or artist histories from all genres and eras, and the life and times of lesser-known audio formats
• Watershed moments in history, either recorded sound history or documentation of history through recorded sound
• Innovative research, preservation and access projects, community-based archiving initiatives, digital humanities, cultural approaches to sound recordings, soundscapes, etc.
• The challenges of born-digital materials and emerging sound recording formats and genres (collecting, producing, promoting, archiving, and curating)
• Advancements in audio production and preservation tools and techniques for legacy and digital formats