Metal in Strange Places Conference

Hello everyone, sorry it has been so long but I have been in catch up mode since the conference ended. I fell way behind in teaching and planning. I do want to say a huge thank you to all of you who attended, presented, went to the fiction reading or the concluding show. Also the planning committee was amazing: Kevin, Brian, Alexis, Lynn, Jacob, Amanda, Dawn, Patrick, and Nathan--Thank You!! Overall the conference was a big success--and we came in under budget, wich always loks good for future endeavors.
A few of you have asked me when the next one is--not for three or four years, since our department is sponsoring other conferences and I would like to propose Dayton as the host for the 2021 ISMMS conference.
I still plan to send out an evaluation form for those who attended as well. Putting on a conference like this is a lot of work, but when we can have the kinds of discussions and do the kind of networking that we did I think it makes that much more worthwhile.
I hope to see you in Victoria for this year's ISMMS conference.
Bryan \m/

Okay folks, here is the conference schedule. As you can see we have a ton of cool papers and a huge variety of topics. It's going to be a great three days. Please register!

Metal in Strange Places Conference Daily Schedule
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Keller Hall, University of Dayton Law School, Mathias Heck Courtroom
3:00-5:00 p.m.—Registration
5:15-5:30 p.m.—Welcome and Introduction: Bryan Bardine, Andy Slade (English Dept. Chair)
5:30-6:45 p.m.—Session #1
Session Chair: Bryan Bardine
Keynote #1—Tracy Reilly: “Heavy Metal in Court”
7:00-9:00 p.m.—Fiction Reading: Metal and Literature (Snacks and Drinks Provided)
Session Chair: Bryan Bardine
Dean Swinford: Reading from the Death Metal Epic Trilogy: The Inverted Katabasis and Goat Song Sacrifice

Friday, October 21, 2016
Kennedy Union Ballroom
9:00 a.m.-All Day—Registration
9:20-9:30 a.m.—Opening Remarks: Bryan Bardine
9:30-10:45 a.m.—Session #2: Metal Community around the World
Session Chair: Nelson Varas Diaz
Edward Banchs: “They Will Scream Quietly: The Metal Community of Zimbabwe in Times of Peril”
Kris Fletcher: “The Rise of Mediterranean Metal”
Felix Reyes: “Move Over J-Pop: Empowering Women Ruling with Resistance in the Japanese Jukinzoku Scene”
11:00-12:15 p.m.—Session #3: Metal and the Winds of Hostility
Session Chair: Brenda Walter
Matthew Unger: “Teaching Brutality: Methodological Reflections on the Study of Extreme Metal Aesthetics”
Eric Smialek: “Extreme Metal and Its Others: Metal Audiences’ Hostility Towards Adolescence”
Brenda Walter: “Visceral: Disemboweling the Bodily Architecture of Black Metal”
12:15-2:00 p.m.—Lunch Break
Jebeneezer Law: “Moments in Time: Capturing Dayton’s Metal Scene” photography exhibit will be in room 207 for the first half of each lunch break during the conference.
2:00-3:15 p.m.—Session #4
Session Chair: Amanda Reed
Keynote #2—Gabby Riches: “Researching on the Edges: Reconceptualizing Extreme Metal Female Fandom through Moshpit Practices and Affective Encounters”
3:30-4:45 p.m.—Session #5: Black Metal around the World
Session Chair: Brian Hickam
Mei-Ra St. Laurent: “Metal Noir Quebecois: Understanding Black Metal Representations of Nationalist Ideology in Quebec’s Black Metal Scene”
Russell Skelchy: “Worshippers of the Sugarcane Fields: Black Metal and the Politics of Inversion in Indonesia”
Brian Hickam: “To Cast a Shadow: Semiotics of Color in Black Metal Cover Art”
5:00-6:15 p.m.—Session #6: Which Side are You On?
Session Chair: Edward Banchs
Aaron McPeck: “American Folk Metal: Homegrown Sounds in Panopticon’s ‘Kentucky’”
Jasmine Shadrack: “Mater Onmium and the Cosmic Womb of the Abyss: Nomadic Interiorities and Matrifocal Black Metal Performance”
James Kopf: “From He***te to Headphones: Black Metal, Disreality, and the Temporary Autonomous Zone”

Rest of Evening: Explore Dayton
We will have a list of local restaurants and bars in the area if you are interested in going out for the evening, including a sign-up sheet for various places.

Saturday, October 22, 2016
Kennedy Union Ballroom
9:00 a.m.-All Day—Registration
9:20-9:30 a.m.—Opening Remarks: Bryan Bardine
9:30-10:45 a.m.—Session #7: Researching Metal Studies
Session Chair: Ross Hagen
Ross Hagen, Nelson Varas Diaz, Jasmine Hazel Shadrack, and Joan Jocson Singh: “Looking for Metal: Rethinking Methodologies in Metal Studies”
11:00-12:15 p.m.—Session #8: Taking a Closer Look at Dayton’s Metal Scene
Session Chair: Bryan Bardine
Neilson Hixson, Jebeneezer Law, Marc Godsey, and Benny Bodine: “Exploring the Dayton Metal Scene from the Perspective of a Club Owner, Metal Photographer, and Two Musicians”
12:15-2:00 p.m.—Lunch Break
Jebeneezer Law: “Moments in Time: Capturing Dayton’s Metal Scene”
2:00-3:15 p.m.—Session #9: The Look, the Sound, and the Fashion of Metal
Session Chair: Brad Klypchak
Toni-Matti Karjalainen: “Exploring the Use of Country-of-Origin References in Metal Media”
Brian Kirkmeyer: “Engineering Design Concepts in Heavy Metal”
Amanda Barnett: “Denim Metals: Does Heavy Metal Dress Code and Subgenre Sabotage or Supercharge the Battle Jacket Experience”
3:30-4:45 p.m.—Session #10: Understanding at the Margins
Session Chair: Kevin Ebert
Kevin Ebert: “Teaching Metal: Navigating the Reactions in the Classroom”
Masie Kaiser: “The Myth of ‘Genderblindness’ in Metal Culture
Jeremy Wallach and Esther Clinton: “United We Shall Never Fail: Thoughts on Metal and Disability”

5:00-6:15 p.m.—Session #11
Session Chair: Chris Burnside
Keynote #3—Henkka Seppala: “Playing Metal for a Living and Studying Human Capital: The Music Scene, Scholar System, and their Future in Finland”
6:15-6:30 p.m.—Conference Closing

8:00 p.m.—Charity Concert Featuring: ZUEL, Engraved Darkness, EpiKisT,
4 Star Revival, and Forces of Nature
Oddbody’s Music Room
5418 Burkhardt Road
Dayton, OH
Ticket Price: $10 at the door

Please take advantage of our new, blue "SIGN UP" button in the upper right corner! One click takes you straight to registration for the Metal in Strange Places Conference.

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Registration is ongoing for the conference. To register just go to http://ecommons.udayton.edu/metal_music and follow the steps. If you have any questions let me know.

Also our next presentation abstract to share is from Masie Kaiser. It is titled "The Myth of "genderblindness' in Metal culture."

The myth of "genderblindness" in metal culture

One of the most significant obstacles to talking openly about and improving gender dynamics in metal is “genderblindness.” Based on the concept of colorblindness developed by critical race theorists, genderblindness refers to the idea that one does not “see” gender; that gender is simply not a factor in one’s treatment of others or the way people are treated in society at large. Genderblindness is meant to be a positive attribute or a goal to which one should aspire; however, I argue that genderblindness is a myth and that its pursuit is harmful rather than helpful.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, gender and its associations constantly affect our decisions and relationships. When women are told that gender discrimination does not exist, they have no recourse for airing any concerns about sexism. In this way, genderblindness is a mechanism for maintaining the gendered hierarchy that places women, transgendered people, and non-binary people in a position of lower status.
Gender is ever-present in metal: it affects who we talk to at shows, how we evaluate a musician, where we stand in the crowd, and virtually everything else. But too often, when gender is mentioned, metalheads will assert that they do not “see” gender, or that everyone should receive the same treatment, ignoring the reality that some groups have different needs and are historically and politically situated differently than others. In this way, the claim of genderblindness is frequently used as a tool for avoiding a direct confrontation with sexism.
Placing recent work by metal scholars such as Rosemary Lucy Hill, Julian Schaap, and Susanna Nordström in conversation with my own ethnographic research, the presentation will explore the following: What are the advantages and disadvantages of a genderblind position? How is it present in metal? Who uses this concept, how, and why? What effects does genderblindness have on metalheads who are not men, and on metal as a gendered power structure?

Welcome to eCommons, the institutional repository at the University of Dayton If you're reading this page you may have mis-typed the link or it may have been truncated if you copied it from an email. If that is not the case, please report this error to the and we will correct it as soon as possible.

The conference is just one month away! Are you getting ready? Registration is open and The Marriott at the University of Dayton is offering a special rate until September 30.

Our three keynotes this year are
Henkka Seppala, bass player for Children of Bodom
Gabby Riches, Doctoral candidate at Leeds Beckett University
Tracy Reilly, Professor of Law and Technology, University of Dayton School of Law

We also have a local panel featuring
Neilson Hixson, Owner of Oddbody's Music Room
Jebeneezer Law, Metal Photographer
Marc Godsey, Guitarist with Forces of Nature
Benny Bodine, Guitarist for Four Star Revival

Here's a presentation abstract by Brenda Walter, titled "Visceral: Disemboweling the Bodily Architecture of Black Metal." Brenda's presentation will be on Friday, October 21 at 11 a.m.

“Visceral: Disemboweling the Bodily Architecture of Black Metal”

Black metal has the power to stimulate the mind, to bring the listener to the very edge of an intellectual nihilistic abyss. While the experience of Black Metal can be one of transcendence and annihilation, it is nevertheless rooted in the embodiment of the listener. Deep, dark, growling, heavy—the architecture of Black Metal’s primal sound and aesthetic are closely associated with the chaotic lower abdomen, including the generative organs and the bowels. This paper will examine the deep body-structures of Black Metal, beginning with the medieval construction of the viscera as a place of inverted and sinful darkness, the fetid locus of demons and Satanic evil, and the origin of wicked sexual rapacity. Theological treatises such as the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas and the De Universo of William of Auvergne, the miracle tales of possession and purgation recorded at the shrines of saints, and later witchcraft treatises such as the Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum and Remy’s Demonolatry depict the bowels as demon-infested caverns that, when ruptured, reveal the festering evil within the mind-body of the afflicted. These same structures run like sinews through the inverted, necrotic, and ruptured bodily construction of Black Metal. Like a medieval exorcism, the ultimate goal of Black Metal is the purgation of fetid material and the exposure of the demons hidden within. However, unlike the exorcist who banishes the demon, Black Metal seeks to release it as a means of making visible the stinking offal of human platitudes and the delusional niceties of quotidian life. As in architectural Bowelism, in which the building’s intestinal pipes visceral vents are displayed on its exterior in an act of Brutalist honesty, Black Metal Bowelism brings the viewer-listener to the abject experience of their own soil and waste, their rootedness to the earth, even as they are transported to the intellectual abyss.