Event Details

End: October 13, 2015

Call for Papers

Essay Collection: Leonard Bernstein and Washington, D.C.

Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday falls in August 2018. As part of the Bernstein centennial celebrations taking place during the 2017–2018 season, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Leonard Bernstein Office are organizing multiple performances and events throughout the Washington, D.C. area. In connection with these celebrations, abstracts are now being sought for a scholarly essay collection representing Bernstein’s varied and close relationship to the nation’s capital.

Applicants should submit an abstract of no more than 400 words, their full academic CV, and a single biographic paragraph of no more than 150 words. Please also list any images or appendices you would like to include.

The selected abstracts will be included in a book proposal that will be presented to an academic publisher in November 2015. Completed essays should be approximately 6,000–10,000 words in length, although proposals for shorter or longer essays will be considered on a case-by-case basis. The volume editors are scholars from Washington, D.C.: Daniel Abraham and Alicia Kopfstein-Penk of American University, and Andrew H. Weaver of The Catholic University of America.

The volume editors are particularly interested in abstracts for papers on the following:

• Important Bernstein premieres and performances in Washington, D.C. (including 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Songfest, and Mass);
• Bernstein’s involvement with Washington, D.C. artistic organizations or other academic or civic institutions;
• Bernstein’s television and radio broadcasts originating from Washington, D.C.;
• Bernstein and the Kennedy family;
• Bernstein and Washington politics (including presidential inaugurations, Richard Nixon, James [Jimmy] Carter, and J. Edgar Hoover, as well as the political implications of Bernstein’s works);
• Bernstein and McCarthyism;
• Analysis and discussion of oral histories of citizens of Washington. D.C. recalling Bernstein;
• Bernstein and the process of fundraising and opening of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts;
• Bernstein’s students and protégés in Washington, D.C.;
• Other topics that intersect Bernstein, his career, works, and character with the national capital region.

Deadline for Abstracts: 13 October 2015. Selections will be made by late fall 2015. The deadline for accepted full essays will be in fall 2016 with an aim to publishing the collection in fall 2017 following a peer-review process.

Please submit abstracts and queries to BernsteinsWashingtonDC@gmail.com