March 30-April 1, 2023
"Playing the (Heart) Strings: Music, Wellness, and the Body"
MGSA Conference
June 16-18, 2022
"Theorizing African American Music"
October 2, 2020
"Character, Caricature, Characterization"
MGSA Conference
"Enacting Curricular Change in Music Education through Vernacular Music"
CWRU Music Education Program, Center for Popular Music Studies, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Keynote
Marilyn Mobley (CWRU): "Changing the Tune: The Value of Diversity in Music Education"
October 5-6, 2018
"Popular Music, Popular Movement(s)"
MGSA Conference
April 20-21, 2018
"Beyond Genre: Jazz as Popular Music
October 6-7, 2017
“Popular Song in Film: Thirty Years of Gorbman’s Unheard Melodies”
Speakers included:
- Caryl Flinn- How Todd Haynes Took the Camp out of The Carpenters
- Anahid Kassabian- From Awkward to Insecure: Rap in a web series and its HBO offspring
- Kevin Donnelly- The Rolling Stones Code and Performance (1970)
- Jim Buhler- Nondiegetic Music and Stylized Sound- James Buhler
- Jeff Smith- Pop Music, Processing Fluency, and Pleasure: Film Songs as Both Hype and Memento
- Kathryn Kalinak- Popular Music at Edison: The Roots of Musical Accompaniment to Film
- Richard Dyer- Is It Their Song? The Use of Popular Song for Melodramatic Climax
- Elsie Walker- Hearing the melodies–from The Searchers to Shine
- David Neumeyer- The Ballad of Sergei and Stella: Music in and from The Uninvited (1944)
- Robynn Stilwell- Little Matched Girl: Belle’s voice, authenticity, and genuineness in Disney’s live-action Beauty & the Beast
- Jennifer Fleeger- The Voice Lesson: Learning to Sing on Screen
- Jim Deaville- Unheard Melodies: The Trailer
- Neil Lerner- Unheard Metaphors are Sweeter: Towards a Disablist Film Music Theory
- Julie Hubbert- Auteur Music and Labor
- Daniel Goldmark- Pixar’s Memories
- Martin Marks- I’ll Sing You in My Dreams: David Lynch’s American Songbook
February 23-25, 2017
"Gimme Shelter: Popular Music and Protection"
The CPMS hosted the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US-Branch’s annual conference at Case Western Reserve University.
October 2-3, 2015
“Popular Music and Communities” MGSA Conference
Speakers included:
- Natalie Oshukany (City University of New York), “‘Americanizing’ the Criminal Song: Willi Tokarev and Russian-Jewish Immigrant Identity in 1980s New York City”
- Bryan Wright, (University of Pittsburgh), “The Ragtime Piano Revival Community in America”
- Nicole Winger (University of Western Ontario), “Reinterpreting Harry Belafonte: A Narrative of Resistance, Activism and Crossover Success”
- Sean Peterson (University of Oregon), “‘Hip-Hop Without a DJ’: Authenticating The Roots in an Era of Sample-Based Hegemony”
- Catherine Hall (Florida State University), “‘Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock!’: Music and Heroism in the Harry Potter Fandom”
- Sarah Suhadolnik (University of Michigan), “Watch, Tweet, Listen, Repeat: Channel Surfing to the Top of the Charts”
- Keynote lecture by Norma Coates (University of Western Ontario), “Fantasies and Humpty-Dumpties: Teen Girls, the Monkees, and The Monkees”
- Danielle Maggio (University of Pittsburgh), “‘Soul Power’: Black Popular Music as a Mobilizing Force For Radical Activism in Chicago, 1967-1973”
- C. Megan MacDonald, (Florida State University), “White as Snow: Performances of Whiteness in Depression-Era Southern Gospel Communities”
- Marco Accattatis (Rutgers University), “Work Hard, Play Hard: Normalizing Neoliberal Ideology in Popular Music”
- Trevor Nelson (Michigan State University), “Bottoms Up: Parody, Camp, and Homonormative Critique in the Music of Willam Belli”
- John Hausmann (College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati), “The Deadhead Community, Parodies, and the Marginalization of the Counterculture”
- Christa Anne Bentley (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), “Self-Expression and Communal Belonging in Singer-Songwriter Performance from the 1970s”
- Ryland Bennett (Tufts University), “The Cult of ‘Keytar Bear:’ Performing Utopia for Boston’s Masses”
- Keynote lecture by Mark Katz (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), “‘We Need You to Get this Right’: Musical Communities and the Responsibilities of the Scholar”
April 26, 2014
“Drumming”
Speakers included:
- Robert Walser (CWRU), “A Typology of Drum Fills”
- Mandy Smith (CWRU), “The Rhythm is Gonna Get You: The Primitive vs. the Virtuosic in Rock Drumming”
- Mark Ferber (City College of New York), “Perspectives of Pedagogy of the Drumset”
- Steven Baur (Dalhousie University), “Toward a Cultural History of the Backbeat”
- Gareth Dylan Smith (Institue of Contemporary Music Performance), “Embodied Experience, Autoethnograph and Rock”
November 16, 2013
“Queer Popular Music”
Speakers included:
- Mitchell Morris (Amherst College)
- Judith Periano (Cornell University)
- Stephan Pennington (Tufts University)
- Susan McClary (CWRU)
April 12-13, 2013
“’Sing Me That Song Again’: The History and Impact of Tin Pan Alley”
Speakers included:
- Richard Crawford (University of Michigan), “Scenes from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess”
- Walter Frisch (Columbia University), “If Ever a Wiz There Was: Harold Arlen and American Popular Song”
- Keir Keightley (University of Western Ontario), “From Hogan’s Alley to Tin Pan Alley”
- Jeffrey Magee (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne), “From Flatbush to the Sea: The Cozy Cottage Trope on Tin Pan Alley and Broadway, 1910s-70s”
- Gillian Rodger (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “When Singing was Acting: Song and Character in Variety Theater”
- Rose Rosengard Subotnik (Brown University), “My Father’s Musical Time-Capsule: American Songs, Sheet Music, and the Dream that Got Away”