Music for Girls Conference and Popular Music and Society special issue

Music for Girls Conference (University of Sussex, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, 19-20 June 2023)

The AHRC Music for Girls network is hosting a conference on 19-20 June 2023 that will explore popular music, gender, and knowledge.

In the public imaginary the figure of the popular music expert is nearly always male. So strong is the male expert stereotype that it has been successfully and humorously parodied in popular culture from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity to the ‘mansplaining’ proprietor of the guitar shop to the sneering judge of the television talent contest. The Music for Girls Conference aims to illuminate ways of listening to and knowing about popular music that have been marginalised in media representations and academic conversations alike. What if, instead of looking at how people who identify as women and girls are sidelined by male-focused popular music sites of knowledge acquisition, we centre the experiences of women and girls as key to ‘knowing’ popular music, unpacking the politics of knowledge, and developing an ordinary but powerful ‘expertise’? We seek a broad range of speakers to explore the intersection of popular music, gender, and knowledge across disciplines, regions, genres, and ways of knowing. We also invite reflections on changes and continuities involving sex and gender within popular music culture and popular music studies.

Potential themes might include (but are not limited to) critical perspectives on women and:

• embodied knowledge (e.g. dance routines and dance crazes)

• contemporary non-rock genres (e.g. grime, drill, hyperpop)

• material culture, knowledge, and waste

• knowledge in the context of digital poverty (or poverty in general)

• popular music knowledge as narrative and fantasy

• collections and memorabilia

• completism and/or partiality

• gendered rituals that pertain to popular music (e.g. getting ready to go out)

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Popular Music and Society on ‘Gender and Popular Music Knowledge’

A special issue of Popular Music and Society on ‘Gender and Popular Music Knowledge’ (guest editors Mimi Haddon and Bethany Klein) will be linked to the conference, although submissions are open to all.

The scope of the special issue is aligned with the conference theme: the intersection of popular music, gender, and knowledge across disciplines, regions, genres, and ways of knowing. Please indicate within your abstract document if you would like your abstract to be considered for inclusion in the conference, the special issue or both. Following review of abstracts, we will notify authors by the end of March to invite full papers for peer review. Full papers must be completed and ready for submission by 19 June 2023. Although space will not allow all submissions of full papers to be included, we are committed to a quick turnaround and reviewer feedback, whether or not the paper is accepted.

Submit abstract of up to 250 words to [email protected] by 1 February 2023. Please include:

-Your name and affiliation

-Your email address

-A note if you would like your abstract to be considered for the conference, the Popular Music and Society special issue, or both.