Women, Music, Power celebrates the work of Suzanne G. Cusick through a two-day symposium; a concert of new music; and the publication of a Festschrift volume in Prof. Cusick’s honor that will appear as volume 19 (2015) of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, guest-edited by Emily Wilbourne.

The symposium is free and open to the public. All sessions will take place at the Jerome Greene Annex at Columbia Law School (116th Street between Morningside and Amsterdam). The concert will take place at the Teatro of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University (Amsterdam Avenue at 117th Street).

Suzanne G. Cusick is an influential figure in modern musicology. Her early work proved foundational to the fields of feminist and queer musicology, and her full body of scholarship remains among the most sophisticated, engaging, and provocative work in music studies. Her recent writings on the use of music in the so-called “War on Terror” have helped to launch a new generation of scholarship on music and violence and have re-configured the ways in which politics and music are understood as mutually constitutive. Whether focused on new styles of music making in early modern Italian courts, or on the soundscape of CIA blacksites, Cusick’s work is concerned with questions of how music functions as a material practice, with palpable consequences for both listeners and performers. Her work repeatedly pushes beyond the resting places of traditional scholarship, redefining the ways in which we can think about music, about gender, and about music scholarship. Women, Music, Power, seeks to highlight the central themes of Cusick’s work and to explore their continued relevance to musical scholarship writ large. 

The symposium is accompanied by a special concert featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) presenting new works by a cast of international composers, each with ties to Columbia University or New York University: Zosha Di Castri and David Adamcyk, Maria Stankova, and Natacha Diels. The concert will be held in the Teatro of the Italian Academy at Columbia University. 

The Women and Music special issue will be launched at the symposium. The volume comprises nineteen articles and a text piece inspired by Cusick’s work, as well as an introductory essay by Emily Wilbourne. Article topics include female performers and songwriters from a wide swath of historical time, queer readings of music and of historical narratives, the voice, sexual and musical violence, and historiographical writing on embodiment, musicology, Jazz studies and ethnomusicology, with contributions from Amy Brosius, Annamaria Cecconi, Ryan Dohoney, Melina Esse, Kimberly Francis, Bonnie Gordon, Elizabeth Hoffman, Tomie Hahn, Nicol Hammond, Nadine Hubbs, Jenny Olivia Johnson, Elizabeth K. Keenan, Clara Hunter Latham, Maureen Mahon, Melanie L. Marshall, Jessica A. Schwartz, Tes Slominski, Judy Tsou, Sherrie Tucker, Holly Watkins, Deborah Wong, and Marìa Edurne Zuazu.

Last but not least, an exhibit focusing on Cusick's work, the Women and Music journal, and the twenty-five year history of the biannual Feminist Theory and Music conferences will be installed at the in the Gabe M. Wiener Music Library, Dodge Hall, Columbia University between December 7 2015 and January 29, 2016. The exhibition is curated by Velia Ivanova and Jane Forner, Columbia graduate students in Historical Musicology.

Women, Music, Power is organized by the Department of Music and Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University, and is co-sponsored by the Department of Music and Dean for Humanities at New York University's Faculty of Arts & Science; Center for Ethnomusicology, Center for Science & Society, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Columbia University Libraries, Department of Philosophy, Department of Anthropology, the Fritz Reiner Fund, The Heyman Center and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, and the Music Performance Program at Columbia University; and the Canada Council for the Arts, Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture, Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, and the Frederick P. Rose and Sandra P. Rose Foundation. 

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