ONLINE SYMPOSIUM
North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA)
Music and Ideas of the Popular: Reconsidering British Music and Musical Practices
August 10-12, 2023 (on Zoom)
The topic of the 2023 North American British Music Studies biennial online symposium We hope to address the following questions: How are notions of the “popular” tied to assumptions about gender, race, national belonging, and social status? What values and ideologies are mobilized by the opposition of popular with elite culture? How has popular music been mediated, and how does its mediation shape the politics of space and place, empire and nation? What are the ways in which cultural producers, media makers, and fans have tried to break down the traditional elite / popular dichotomous models? How are all of these ideas discursively legitimated – and challenged (today and / or in the past)? What role has popular music played in British intellectual history, including but not limited to cultural studies thinkers, such as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, Simon Frith, Paul Gilroy, and Richard Dyer?
With these initial questions in mind, we invite contributions that investigate ideas of the popular not only in contemporary British musical practices, but also in historical, contextual, biographical or theoretical contexts as well.
We invite you to submit an abstract (200‒300 words) and a brief biography (100‒150 words) for a paper presentation of 20 minutes’ duration by 1 May 2023 to nabmsa2023@gmail.com. We also encourage the submission of roundtable or panel proposals on any of the themes.
For fuller information please go to https://nabmsa.org/