Popular Music Studies in the Twenty-First Century‏

Call for submissions
IASPM Journal
November 2012
Popular Music Studies in the Twenty-First Century

It is thirty years since the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) was founded and the journal Popular Music was launched. Although much is different today in popular music studies, the field still faces a number of challenges, some of which have changed very little during the intervening period.

In a recent paper in IASPM Journal Vol 2, Philip Tagg assesses what issues need to be addressed in the field, and how they could be explored, covering subjects such as interdisciplinarity, interprofessionalism, epistemic inertia and invisible music. He concludes that musicologists working in popular music have failed to make sufficient inroads into conventional musicology to ensure that popular music and art music are now treated equally. He also points out that researchers in popular music studies from non-musical backgrounds still struggle to address the music within popular music studies.

IASPM Journal, the journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, is now seeking responses that address the issues raised by this paper, which is available at http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/issue/current

We welcome papers that explore the treatment of popular music in different cultures and contexts, as well as suggestions for the future of the field. We wish to gain an overview of socio-political issues that are raised when studying popular music, as well as those that address popular music and its cultures directly, outlining a range of available analytical and research approaches, and the issues raised by such varied methodologies.

This special issue aims to include input from experienced IASPM members who can provide a long view both of the successes of the association, and of its remaining tasks. It also welcomes submissions from more recent members who can provide new perspectives on the study of popular music.

Please submit proposals of 250 words to Rupert Till (r.till@hud.ac.uk) by 9 April 2012. Submission date for the finished article will be 16 August 2012, with a publication date in November 2012.

Contributors must be members of IASPM to have their work published in IASPM Journal, membership details are available at http://www.iaspm.net/join/

IASPM Journal is the journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), an organization established to promote inquiry, scholarship and analysis in the area of popular music. In addition to Special Issue CFPs, the journal maintains space for ongoing scholarly work; we publish articles, book reviews and PhD abstracts on popular music of any genre, era or geographic location. PhD abstracts should be approximately 250 words long, describing a PhD that is published or nearing completion.