The Edges of Sound. On Sound and Dance: Identities, thresholds and tolerances, from Antiquity to Middle Ages
Les frontières du sonore. Autour des sons et de la danse : identités, seuils et tolérances, de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge
Published on Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Abstract
For issue 12 of Frontière.s, to be published at the end of 2026, we propose a theme based on sound. Arnaud Saura-Ziegelmeyer, Angela Bellia and Licia Buttà invite you to reflect on music, soundscapes and dance in the ancient and medieval periods, the study of which has recently undergone significant and multiple developments.
Announcement
Argument
The study of music, soundscapes and dance in ancient and medieval periods has experienced significant and multifaceted developments in recent years, encompassing a variety of methods of approach and a diversity of fields of study. The terminology used nevertheless remains vague, as the work cuts across such a wide range of disciplines, including history of religions, history of sensitivities, archaeomusicology, experimental archaeology, acoustic psychology and even history of art, literature and philology. Our aim is thus to propose a thematic approach that can transcend these divides in methodology and school of thought. The notion of sound edge(s) will therefore be at the heart of this issue.
We will thus be interested in everything that can mark, from an acoustic and/or coreutical point of view, a difference, an edge, a border, a threshold, in the broadest possible sense of the term each time. This edge may be a limit between individuals, between communities, between the divine and the human, between the animate and the inanimate; or it may mark a distinction, of a geographical nature, between sacred space and civic space, between the private and the public, between the barbarian and the civilized, between the state of trance and other states of the soul and body, etc. The study of sounds and gestures allows us to question identities and affiliations, whatever their nature. This will involve questioning more precisely:
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Sound edges as identities or markers of identity: are certain sounds characteristic of a community, an ethnicity, a nation compared to other sounds that are more common and weak from an identity point of view?
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Sound edges as geographical markers: are certain sounds attached to the specific places, thus making it possible to characterize the passage from one geographical space to another?
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Sound as a tool for distinguishing the human and divine spheres: are certain sounds specific to the gods and the divine sphere, to the Church and the sacred, as opposed to the domain of the profane or the civic, etc.?
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Sounds as markers of temporal shifts: we will be interested in sounds marking the progress of time (establishment closing time, indication of the time of day, distinction between work time and rest time), but also marking a change in context (the sounds of war as opposed to peaceful sounds, accidental or unusual sounds, announcing a particular event, etc.).
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Sounds that define a space in which the body can engage in choreographic activities and ritualized movements, thereby creating a performative space linked to an audience. In this context, the concept of dancescape will be analyzed to observe how sound events are repeated in these particular spaces, thus highlighting the way in which a soundscape constructs a sound edge which demarcates an auditory and bodily space where the dance takes place.
This call is open to any researcher, beginner or experienced, working on Antiquity and the Middle Ages and may include the following fields: history, literature, philology, art history, archaeology, anthropology, musicology, organology, aesthetics, psychology, philosophy and reception studies.
Schedule
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June 2025: opening of the call
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April the 30th 2026: end of the call
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December 2026: publication
Submission guidelines
Authors must submit their contributions using dedicated submission interface. All paper proposals will consist of a text in French or English, or possibly Italian, of up to 35,000 characters (excluding spaces and bibliography), accompanied by an abstract (between 800 and 1,200 characters, excluding spaces) and a keyword list chosen in the thesaurus Pactols in the language of the article. Authors who wish can contact the committee to check the suitability of their subject with the call.
If the article includes illustrations, the authors must adhere strictly to the journal’s guidelines. They are requested to limit themselves to ten images, and multiple images per figure will not be considered as a single image.
For further information: https://journals.openedition.org/frontieres/2044
Read the full Call for Papers.
Gust editors
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Arnaud Saura-Ziegelmeyer (Institut Catholique de Toulouse, UR CERES – Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès, PLH-ARTEMIS)
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Angela Bellia (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale)
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Licia Buttà (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
Subjects
- History (Main category)
- Mind and language > Representation > Cultural history
- Periods > Prehistory and Antiquity
- Mind and language > Representation > History of art
- Mind and language > Religion
- Periods > Middle Ages
- Mind and language > Language
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Archaeology
Date(s)
- Thursday, April 30, 2026
Keywords
- Histoire de l'art, archéologie, histoire, musique, son, danse, paysage sonore
Contact(s)
- Arnaud Saura-Ziegelmeyer
courriel : ARNAUD [dot] SAURA-ZIEGELMEYER [at] ict-toulouse [dot] fr - Licia Buttà
courriel : licia [dot] butta [at] urv [dot] cat - Angela Bellia
courriel : angela [dot] bellia [at] cnr [dot] it
Reference Urls
Information source
- Vincent Chollier
courriel : revue [dot] frontiere-s [at] cnrs [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .
To cite this announcement
Arnaud Saura-Ziegelmeyer, Angela Bellia, Licia Buttà, « The Edges of Sound. On Sound and Dance: Identities, thresholds and tolerances, from Antiquity to Middle Ages », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, July 02, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14978
