A new installment of the IMS’s provocative online publication is out! This contribution is part of the issue “Musicology’s Monumental Turns” (vol. 10, no. 1, 2026), which throughout the summer, will explore the global, auditory, and literary turns in the study of music and sound.

“On Doing Global Music History”
Jessica Bissett Perea, Olivia Bloechl, Daniel F. Castro Pantoja, Hedy Law, and Juliana M. Pistorius,

The forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Global Music History joins a growing chorus of voices discussing music’s past and present from globally oriented perspectives. With the present level of interest in global music history and related formations such as global musicology and historical ethnomusicology, it is tempting to try to circumscribe this emergent field of research and teaching from the outset. As the Handbook’s co-editors, we have had to assess and reassess GMH’s current state, potential, and pitfalls in the course of developing the volume and working with its 40+ contributors, as well as in related publications. Their chapters-in-progress sketch a composite portrait of this field and its recurrent concerns, as these appear from the authors’ wide-ranging specialties and professional locations. The results so far reveal a pluralistic and evolving musicological domain whose contours we nevertheless aim to outline here …