UNESCO Observatory E-Journal – Volume 1 Issue 6

UNESCO Observatory, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning,
The University of Melbourne

Call for Papers – Singing: Interdisciplinary perspectives on a natural human expressive outlet

Submission deadline: 1st March 2010

Guest Editor: Larry O’Farrell

This issue will focus on the origins and implications of singing, a natural, human expressive outlet.  Linked to social, cultural, and biological development, singing draws on many disciplines and submits to many forms of analysis and specific explorations.  Submissions are invited reflecting multidisciplinary knowledge about singing from the perspectives of psychology, music, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, education, and other disciplines.  Submissions may relate to one of the three themes around which the issue will, provisionally, be organized although other perspectives are welcome.

Theme 1: Development of Singing

• Acquisition of Singing – Determining universal, culture specific and idiosyncratic aspects of the development of singing.
• Singing and Speaking Comparisons – Defining the features that distinguish singing and speech acquisition.

Theme 2: Education

• Teaching Singing and Education through Singing Assessing and improving instructional methods for teaching singing and learning songs, and by using singing to teaching and learn the curricula of other disciplines.

Theme 3: Singing and Well-being

• Cultural Understanding through singing – examining the role of teaching songs of foreign cultures to children to promote lifelong cultural understanding of others and themselves.

• Intergenerational Singing – Determining how singing increases individual physical and psychological well-being and community well- being, with a special focus on intergenerational singing where elder members of a society teach children songs of their culture.

• Singing and Health:  Specific health benefits of singing as in breathing exercise compliance in lung disease through singing.

Text: Annabel J. Cohen Ph.D., AIRS Project Director, University of Prince Edward Island.  Used with permission.

For guidelines for contributors please visit the website: www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/unesco/ejournal/.

Please submit articles directly to the Guest Editor.