Call for Papers for Special Issue of Intersections : Canadian Journal of Music
Music and Care in Canada
We invite submissions to a special issue of Intersections, focused on the various manifestations and complications of care in the context of musicking in Canada.
The concept of care has long been a central theme in education and cultural studies, as exemplified in the works of bell hooks, Carole Gilligan, Joan Tronto, and Nel Noddings. More recently, care has also gained prominence within music studies, notably through William Cheng’s contributions in Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good (2016) and Loving Music Till It Hurts (2019), where he examines issues of academic kindness, disability justice, and vulnerability in musical contexts. Building on Cheng’s insights, Colleen Renihan, John Spilker, and Trudi Wright’s Sound Pedagogy: Radical Care in Music (2024) investigates care as a foundational principle for pedagogical and disciplinary transformation, positioning music classrooms as spaces offering unique and powerful opportunities for care work (9).
Care is contingent on relationships/relations, however, and without a nuanced understanding of context, the notion of care can become ambiguous or even problematic. Care is inherently complex, and its enactment can often inadvertently reinforce existing power imbalances or diminish individual agency. It is riddled with paradoxes and particularities. Scholars like Sara Ahmed, Christina Sharpe, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha illuminate how care has been racialized and gendered, as well as how emotions and affect are intertwined with social and political processes of care, revealing its performative and cultural dimensions. In this issue, we aim to explore the many ways care is expressed, challenged, and reconfigured—perhaps played, harmonized, or transposed—within the realm of music in Canada. What musical care webs have been a part of our country’s various musical histories? How has care been fostered in musical contexts in Canada? What ways has care ensnared those in musical contexts and communities in ways that have been counter-productive or damaging? What possibility could there be in re-thinking relationality in music in Canada through the concept of care?
We invite expressions of interest in the form of a 400-word abstract by October 31, 2025. Abstracts will be reviewed, and select authors invited to prepare submissions of between 4,000 and 7,000 words, which will be due May 1, 2026 before undergoing peer review. We welcome a variety of article forms and formats, interviews, colloquium, creative pieces, etc. and hope to hear from music specialists in all fields.
For further information about Intersections : https://muscan.org/intersections/about-the-journal/
If you have questions about this special issue, please, feel free to reach out to this special issue’s co-editors:
Colleen Renihan (Queen’s University) : intersections@muscan.org
Gretta Sayers (Brandon University): sayersg@brandonu.ca
Intersections is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.