Popular Music in Theory

0.5 credits · Graduate

Popular music started to attract scholarly attention in the 1940s. Most of that attention was negative. Since then, however, a vast amount has been written about the meaning, uses, perils, and possibilities of popular music. Philosophers, musicologists, ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, cultural theorists, and literary scholars have all weighed in. In this course we will consider (a selection of) their contributions to our understanding of popular music and its relationship to commodification, mass culture, political agency, technology, subcultural formations, memory and a range of other topics.