Call for Submissions
Special Issue: Sonic Pollution and Rituals of Purification
Submission Deadline: March 15, 2025
This special issue explores how spiritual communities identify sonic pollution and use rituals of purification to protect sacred spaces and quotidian soundscapes from sounds that are perceived as being dangerous, forbidden, or undesirable. Contributions might focus on divine sound and processes of consecration, sacralization, and exclusion; how sounds and sonic bodies are made theologically legitimate; or how sounds, bodies, and instruments deemed polluting are cleansed by masking, suppressing, silencing, destroying, rewriting, or purifying. While discourses of sonic pollution often center the voices of those defining pollution, this issue also seeks to understand the perspectives of those named as polluters—those excluded because of the sounds they create or with which they are associated. By inviting authors to address the reasons communities identify sonic pollutants and their strategies for sonic purification, this issue will create space for scholars and practitioners to theorize and understand consecration, sacralization, exclusion, and purification across spiritual traditions.
Manuscripts should be submitted on the Yale Journal of Music & Religion webpage by March 15, 2025 for consideration. Authors are welcome to contact Guest Editor John Romey (Purdue University, Fort Wayne) and Editor-in-Chief Jeffers Engelhardt with questions regarding their submission.