This course provides an introduction to the principal methodologies of Popular Music Studies, by means of a focus on musicological Queer Studies. Literature and case studies will be drawn from research on queer communities, musicians, and practices in popular music. As both Popular Music Studies and Queer Studies are inherently interdisciplinary, we will encounter a range of intellectual and methodological angles. These will include fields such as ethnomusicology and ethnographic approaches, historical and archival approaches, music theory and analysis, sociology, and cultural studies. Expectations include regular attendance, active participation in class discussion, and a significant commitment to course reading. close

Amico, Stephen. 2017. Roll Over, Tchaikovsky!: Russian Popular Music and Post-Soviet Homosexuality. Illustrated edition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Barz, Gregory, and William Cheng, eds. 2019. Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Butler, Mark J. 2003. “Taking It Seriously: Intertextuality and Authenticity in Two Covers by the Pet Shop Boys.” Popular Music 22 (1): 1–19.

———. 2007. “‘Some of Us Can Only Live in Songs of Love and Trouble’: Voice, Genre/Gender, and Sexuality in the Music of Stephin Merritt.” In Oh Boy! Masculinities in Popular Music, edited by Freya Jarman-Ivens. Routledge.

Goldin-Perschbacher, Shana. 2022. Queer Country. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press

Jarman-Ivens, Freya, ed. 2007. Oh Boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music. New York: Routledge

Lawrence, Tim. 2006. “‘I Want to See All My Friends at Once’: Arthur Russell and the Queering of Gay Disco.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 18 (2): 144–66.

Maus, Fred Everett. 2001. “Glamour and Evasion: The Fabulous Ambivalence of the Pet Shop Boys.” Popular Music 20 (3): 379–93.

———. 2010. “Three Songs about Privacy, by R.E.M.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 22 (1): 2–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1533-1598.2010.01217.x.

Maus, Fred Everett, Sheila Whiteley, Tavia Nyong’o, and Zoe C. Sherinian, eds. 2022. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Multiple authors. 2013. “Queer/Trans.” Special issue of Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 25 no. 4.

Peraino, Judith Ann. 2006. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to “Hedwig.” Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rivera-Servera, Ramo´n H. 2012. Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Salkind, Micah E. 2019. Do You Remember House? Chicago’s Queer of Color Undergrounds. New York: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, Jodie. 2012. Playing It Queer: Popular Music, Identity and Queer World-Making. Bern: Peter Lang AG.

Whiteley, Sheila, and Jennifer Rycenga, eds. 2006. Queering the Popular Pitch. New York: Routledge. close