Course description
This course examines the relationship between popular music and the relations of power that organize life in the United States. Attending to a range of music from the past 50 years, we explore how music responds to and influences understandings of social difference. Musicians we study may include Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash, Janelle Mon·e, Madonna, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Prince, and Hole. We also read a wide array of scholarship in the fields of pop music studies, African American studies, gender and sexuality studies, and American cultural studies. The following questions guide our inquiry: how do lyrics interact with musics sonic qualities to tell stories in sound? How does pop music raise questions about identity, power, and storytelling? How might pop music communicate social protest and enact social change? How does the music industrys structure shape the publics interaction with pop music?
