EMP Pop Conference 2017

This year's topic:

Sign O' The Times: Music And Politics

“I’d like to help you, son, but you’re too young to vote,” the Congressman says in Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.” Music, especially pop music, tends to anticipate politics—young people give a dress rehearsal of what’s to come, building movements or prefiguring new worlds. No less powerfully, music is shaped by politics, from rules of copyright, drinking ages, and noise volumes to crises of war and social injustice, rents in the fabric. Music’s connection to politics goes beyond sloganizing lyrics; it organizes, stirs, performs possibility.

For this year’s EMP Pop Conference, we invite presentations that relate music, of any styles or era, to politics, however that’s defined. Topics might include:

Movements and Skeptics: anthems of unity and resistance cultures. Or not: music and bad politics, anti-politics, negation, outsider dissent, and solipsism

New Worlds and Nostalgia: futurism, utopian, and fantastic imaginaries from slave spirituals to George Clinton’s Mothership. Traditionalism, nostalgia, residual forces

State Politics: national and local policies; definitions of public and private; citizenship and internalized notions of power and control

Performing Politics: strategic choices of mannerism, vocality, sound, and style; politicians appropriating music; music and propaganda

Identity Politics: teen youth culture and shifts from worker solidarity to racial, gender, and sexual intersections; the radicalism of older artists

Transnational and Border Politics: musical experiences beyond the US; immigration and refugees; sonic territoriality

Leaders and Followers: Individual artists as representatives and fans as electorate; celebrity and “reality” politics

Industry and Everyday Politics: categorizing, i.e. regulating performers; genre wars in country, rock, hip-hop, etc.; band politics and everyday interpersonal issues

Limits: factors preventing music from effecting change

I really hope John J. Miller (the "50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" guy) pitches a paper.

the much-missed Mike Daddino submitted a paper in 2007 on National Review's, ah, fraught relationship with rock

I need to put that paper back online. Hell, I need to put my entire site back online.

http://www.empmuseum.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference/

Format

Individual proposals for 20-minute presentations should be 300 words, with a 75-word bio. For three-person (90-minute) or four-person (120-minute) panel proposals, include a one-paragraph overview and individual statements of 300 words with a 75-word bio. For roundtables, outline the subject in up to 500 words, include a 75-word bio for each panelist, and specify desired panel length. We welcome unorthodox proposals: ask for submission advice. Please include emails for all participants.

Deadline

November 8, 2016 to conference organizer Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama) at E✧✧✧.Weisb✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧.

Josh Kun who did a 2012 EMP presentation on Mexico/Cali border music and has written for the NY Times and others and is a professor in Cali, just got a MacArthur "genius" grant

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-josh-kun-20160920-snap-story.html

reminder:

http://www.empmuseum.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference/

Format

Individual proposals for 20-minute presentations should be 300 words, with a 75-word bio. For three-person (90-minute) or four-person (120-minute) panel proposals, include a one-paragraph overview and individual statements of 300 words with a 75-word bio. For roundtables, outline the subject in up to 500 words, include a 75-word bio for each panelist, and specify desired panel length. We welcome unorthodox proposals: ask for submission advice. Please include emails for all participants.

Deadline

November 8, 2016 to conference organizer Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama) at E✧✧✧.Weisb✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧.

Deadline day for proposals

sent!

I'm so mad that I forgot about this - I had a really good idea for a paper this year.

I heard the EMP is changing it's name to the Museum of Pop Culture.

Yup, announced the other day. New acronym: MoPOP. Making it the...MoPOP Pop Conference?

to the tune of "mmbop"

Acceptances are heading out -- who got in? (Didn't pitch myself this time around.)

if these things were in new york i would so be there.

that new york one was SO much fun.

It was a treat for sure!

I'm in.

In.

So the place is called MoPOP now, whatever. Anyway, schedule up (scroll down the page a bit):

http://www.mopop.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference/

As noted, there's now a registration fee for the first time in a long while.

most tweets suggest this is as interesting as always

It is! But I'm biased.

first year since... 2011 or 2012, I think, that I couldn't make it, just wasn't feasible on any level this year

https://medium.com/@jonathanbogart/look-at-the-boy-doll-look-at-the-girl-doll-the-radical-wit-transgressive-populism-of-dce66fb6461d