Welcome to The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch

Special Issue of Popular Music: The Critical Imperative

Posted: November 27th, 2014 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

This special issue will address what we call the critical imperative: the demand that academic writing on popular music place new primacy on sounds as made and heard, and for that writing to be styled in a way that foregrounds not just its academic rigour, but also imaginative description, creative interpretation and bold evaluation.

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Special issue of Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture on Music and Discovery

Posted: November 16th, 2014 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Co-Guest-Editors: Tom McCourt (Fordham University) and Nabeel Zuberi (University of Auckland)

The editors of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture invite submissions for a special issue on the topic of Music and Discovery. We are aiming for a multi-disciplinary issue that draws on the many resonances of the word “discovery” in music as popular communication, and we welcome critical approaches in music education; musicology and ethnomusicology; film, television and cultural studies; media and communication studies; sound studies; popular music studies; global media, and other fields. We seek manuscripts that examine the politics and aesthetics of musical discovery, and how the tropes of discovery are invoked in disciplines, research methods and the production of knowledge related to music. How is “discovery” represented in musical production and sounds, in the uses and social meaning of music?

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Court and Spark: An international symposium on the work of Joni Mitchell

Posted: November 12th, 2014 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

July 3rd, 2015, University of Lincoln.

 Joni Mitchell is widely recognised as an innovative, influential, much-loved and much-imitated artist. From her debut album Song to a Seagull to her most recent Shine, Mitchell’s music: her tunings, her lyrics, her scope has drawn critical and popular acclaim. And yet, scholarly attention to her work has been relatively limited. This symposium will attend to Mitchell as a figure worthy of sustained critical thought and appreciation.

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Songs of Social Protest

Posted: November 11th, 2014 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

A two day symposium: Thursday 30th April & Friday 1st May 2015, University of Limerick, Ireland

Following on from successful symposia on The Smiths, Morrissey, Riot Grrrl and David Bowie, the research cluster ‘Popular Music and Popular Culture’, in conjunction with ‘Power, Discourse and Society’ at the University of Limerick, Ireland, now convene a two day symposium to examine songs of social protest from a global perspective. An approach that takes into account the radical contexts of music is central to examining processes of empowerment and disempowerment in the current neoliberal age. Underpinned by a theoretical framework derived from the work of Stuart Hall, Richard Middleton, Ian Peddie, Serge Dennisoff, Philip Tagg, and Johnathan Friedman we take as our starting point that popular culture (in the broadest sense), and music in particular, may reproduce or challenge the cultural / political status quo in contemporary societies across the globe. In this interdisciplinary conference, we therefore particularly welcome papers that address (but are not limited to) the following:

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“What Will Remain of the Eighties?” Popular Music and Jazz in Italy between 1980 and 2000

Posted: November 3rd, 2014 | Filed under: Calls for Papers, IASPM Conferences | No Comments »

Parma, “Arrigo Boito” Conservatory, 13-14 February 2015

The 1980s and 1990s have been overlooked for a long time in music history studies, in spite of the big technological, economic, social, political changes that took place in those decades: Reaganism and Thatcherism, the fall of the Soviet bloc, globalization, and the gradual dismantling of the welfare state. In music, the 1980s and 1990s brought the development of samplers and computer-based instruments, the creation and mass marketing of digital formats, satellite broadcasts, MTV, hard disk and laptop recording, ‘world music’, and stylistic innovations in many music genres.

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