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

Raymond Williams, Popular Music and Subculture

Posted: March 17th, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | Comments Off on Raymond Williams, Popular Music and Subculture

A day conference organised by The Subcultures Network and the Performance and Contemporary Arts Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University, Friday 10th June 2016, Friends’ Meeting House, Mount St, Manchester 9am – 5pm.

Recently, there has been a significant revival of interest in the diverse legacy of Raymond Williams. So far, however, the connections between Williams and the study of subcultures, popular music and social change have been little explored. How have Williams’s early work, his later cultural materialist approach, and the work of those influenced by him, shaped the field? And how might this tradition be developed to address some of the most pressing issues and problems in contemporary popular musical and subcultural studies?

Confirmed speakers include Rhian E. Jones (author of Clampdown: Pop Cultural Wars on Class and Gender), Anne Robinson (University of the Arts London), Pete Dale (Manchester Metropolitan University)

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations from all with an interest in the theme. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

  • Working class culture, popular music and subculture
  • Structures of feeling
  • Cultural materialism and the contemporary music industry
  • Technology and new media
  • Theories of subculture/post-subculture
  • ‘The Politics of Modernism’ – tensions between musical and political radicalism
  • Williams’ work in adult education and the recent interest in alternative pedagogies in popular musical and subcultural studies
  • Residual, emergent and dominant musical forms and subcultures post-2000

This is a free event, funded by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Performance and Contemporary Arts Research group, but you must register to attend. For more information, to book a place or to propose a paper, please e-mail David Wilkinson d.wilkinson@ mmu.ac.uk or Pete Dale [email protected] (for paper proposals please contact us no later than 1st May).