EVENT Jun 15
ABSTRACT Jun 15
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Coverscaping II: Music’s Visual Culture

N/A
Categories: American, Interdisciplinary, British, Genre & Form, Popular Culture, Literary Theory, African-American, Colonial, Revolution & Early National, Transcendentalists, 1865-1914, 20th & 21st Century, Medieval, Early Modern & Renaissance, Long 18th Century, Romantics, Victorian, 20th & 21st Century, Adventure & Travel Writing, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Drama, Narratology, Poetry, Aesthetics, Anthropology/Sociology, Classical Studies, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies, Film, TV, & Media, Food Studies, History, Philosophy
Event Date: 2025-06-15 Abstract Due: 2025-06-15

This is a call for contributions to a follow-up volume to Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics (eds. Asbjørn Grønstad & Øyvind Vågnes, 2010). In the introduction to that book, the editors suggest that the art of the album cover ought to have “a phenomenology of its own,” intending for that publication to represent “a starting point” for future inquiries (9; 10). Since Coverscaping first appeared in 2010, vinyl album culture has seen a massive surge, to the extent that pressing plants cannot seem to keep up with the demand. There is no shortage of instantly iconic album covers in this recent era; consider, for instance, Arctic Monkeys’ AM (2013), Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), or Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising (2019). It is time to revisit the question of the album cover as a vital artform, so we ask: what is the cultural value and aesthetic significance of the album cover in 2025?

For Coverscaping II, we furthermore wish to examine how cover art might exist beyond the individual album and come to influence the visual contexts of music culture more broadly, encompassing things such as art exhibitions, comics, fashion, moving-image narratives, stage productions, and social media.

This CFP invites submissions relevant to questions pertaining to music’s visual culture. Topics and discussions might include but are certainly not limited to:

 

-        Identifiable trends of album art in the 21st century

-        The role of album covers in the production of musical meaning

-        The politics of album covers

-        Gender, class, and ethnicity in album art

-        Controversial/transgressive album covers

-        Enigmas of iconicity: why do certain covers become iconic?

-        Iconographic traditions

-        Readings/interpretations of particular album covers

-        Album art and the digital/post-digital

-        The album cover between art and advertisement

-        Unsung album designers

-        Historical perspectives on album poetics

-        The process of designing album art

-        Album art and genre

-        Album covers as roadmaps to the music

-        Album covers and nostalgia

-        Affect and emotion in album art

-        Album art and transmedia

-        Reappropriation and redeployment of album art

-        Meme-ification, recirculation and de-contextualization of music artworks

-        Album art in the age of Artificial intelligence

 

 Please send a brief abstract to Chris Vezza (chrisvezzadrums@gmail.com) and Asbjørn Grønstad (asbjorn.gronstad@uib.no) by June 15, 2025 (September 1). A completed first draft is due Feb 1, 2026.

 

 

asbjorn.gronstad@uib.no

Asbjørn Grønstad