The midway assessment is organized in two parts, and starts with a two-hour public seminar, followed by a closed meeting.
The purpose of the midway assessment is to evaluate the progress of the PhD project at a point when it is still possible to make small or more substantial changes.
Programme:
14:15 - 15:00 Presentation by Marek Susdorf
15:00 - 15:45 Comments by, and discussion with, Corinna S. Campbell
15:45 - 16:15 Plenary discussion with the public
Following the public event, there will be a closed meeting between the candidate, invited opponent, and supervisors (16:15-17:15).
Summary:
The main aim of my research is to show how the contemporary narratives of ecomusicology and zoomusicology universalize and overrepresent the experience of the human in their search of sound-based encounters with the 'natural' other, conveying the Western biases embedded in this category. To build my argument, I examine the relationship between various Western European political forces and Suriname, a country on the north-eastern coast of South America and a former Dutch colony. In this presentation, I will show how the past discourses of music and sound-based practices contributed to the creation and maintenance of the category of the human and its ostensibly subordinate others: the natural nonhuman and the enslaved or indigenous less-than-human.