Ethnomusicological Gender Studies
by Marko Kölbl
Ethnomusicological gender studies within our department forms a significant facette of our university’s research focus on gender. As mirrored by the international discourse within ethnomusicology, the department’s approaches to gender show a shift form the categorie women to the category gender – a development from women’s to gender studies. The third volume of the department’s series klanglese entitled Die Frau als Mitte in traditionellen Kulturen, Beiträge zu Musik und Gender (2005, eng.: The Woman as the Center in Traditional Cultures, Contributions to Music and Gender) – an important juncture in the beginnings of ethnomusicological gender reserach within our department – discusses the position of women in traditiona music. Today, ethnomusicological research on gender and sexualitiy within IVE critically engages with gender studies, queer theory and intersectionality, while considering the relation to methodic specifities as ethnography and to common topics of our discipline, like diverse cultural positionalities, ethnicity and migration.
The department actively participates in the international discourse on gender and sexuality within ethnomusicology. The ICTM Study Group on Music, Gender and Sexuality (Chair: Marko Kölbl) is based at our department. In 2018 this study group had a joint meeting with the ICTM Study Group on Music and Minorities, organised by the IVE. Proceedings of this symposium will be published in Volume 12 of the series klanglese festgehalten (Gender, Minorities and Music. Intersections, forthcoming). The department further cooperates with the Working Group Music, Dance, Theatre, Film of the Austrian Gender Studies Association (Leading tam: Andrea Ellmeier, Marko Kölbl, Angelika Silberbauer) and the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group (Conference at mdw in April 2021).
Publications of staff members comprise chapters in Screenings. Wissen und Geschlecht in Musik, Theater, Film. (= mdw Gender Wissen, Bd.1) (Hemetek 2010, eng.: Screenings. Knowledge and Gender in Music, Theatre, Film) as well as in Jahrbuch Musik und Gender (Kölbl 2020, eng.: Yearbook Music and Gender).
Research projects
2017-2018: Voice - The Sonic Dimension of Gender. Interdisciplinary Views on Voice in Opera, Pop and Traditional Music (Marko Kölbl, Tatjana Marković, Lena Jade Müller)
>> Die Frau als Mitte in traditionellen Kulturen, Beiträge zu Musik und Gender
>> ICTM Study Group on Music, Gender and Sexuality
>> Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Geschlechterforschung
>> Screenings. Wissen und Geschlecht in Musik, Theater, Film. (= mdw Gender Wissen, Bd.1)
>> Voice - The Sonic Dimension of Gender. Interdisciplinary Views on Voice in Opera, Pop and Traditional Music