POPULAR MUSIC BOOKS IN PROceSS SERIES
Spring 2025 SCHEDULE

Popular Music Books in Process series, 2025 - 2026 Schedule

 

Since 2020, the Popular Music Books in Process series has held online events for music writers and scholars to showcase recent books or works in progress to an engaged audience. The series is a collaboration between the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Pop Conference, and IASPM-US. There have been more than 140 Zoom events so far, almost all preserved on YouTube. We run roughly biweekly through the fall and winter-spring seasons. Note: the list below is a work in process itself. Other session discussants will be added to the bill in the weeks to come.

 

Co-organizers:  Kimberly Mack, Elena Razlogova, Francesca Royster, Gustavus Stadler, Alyxandra Vesey, Eric Weisbard, and Carl Wilson. Email Eric Weisbard at Eric.Weisbard@gmail.com to be added to the weekly email list with Zoom links and bonus content

All events begin on Wednesdays at 5:30pm ET

 

September 10 -- Musical Theater Roundtable:

Joanna Dee Das, Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America (University of Chicago Press); Ryan Donovan, Virtuosos: How Performance Remade the Musical (in progress),  Liza Gennaro, in progress memoir-biography about her father, Broadway dancer and choreographer Peter Gennaro; Gypsy and the American Dream (in progress); Jeff Magee,  Gypsy and the American Dream (in progress), Liz Wollman, The C Word: Corporatizing Broadway at the Millennium (in progress).

September 24-- Wadada Leo Smith and Nina Sun Eidsheim, In Search of Light: A Dialogue about the Music and Philosophy of Wadada Leo Smith (in progress).

October 8-- David Hesmondhalgh, ed, Music Streaming around the World (University of California Press), along with Raquel Campos Valverde, Zhongwei (Mabu) Li, and Shuwen (Stella) Qu.

October 29 -- Masha Salazkina and Usha Iyer, The Global Phenomenon of Boney M (work in progress), in conversation with Elena Razlogova.

November 5--Living Through History: Dan Beck, "You've Got Michael": Living Through HIStory (Trouser Press Books) and Jerry Portnoy, Dancing With Muddy: Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and My Lucky Life In and Out of the Blues (Chicago Review Press), in conversation with Lauren Onkey.

November 19-- Allison Bumsted, TeenSet, Teen Fan Magazines, and Rock Journalism: Don’t Let the Name Fool You. (University Press of Mississippi) and Peter Richardson, Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine (University of California Press, forthcoming).

December 3 -- Chris Dalla Riva, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves (Bloomsbury). 

December 17--Punk Provocations:  Ellen Bernhard, Stefano Morello, and David Pearson, eds, NOFX: Forty Years of "Problematic" Punk Provocations (Bloomsbury, 2025); Brigitta Davidjants, J.M.K.E.'s To The Cold Land (Bloomsbury); and Tyler Sonnichsen, The Dead Milkmen (J-Card Press, in progress). 

January 7 -- Chris DeVille, Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion (St. Martin’s Press).

January 21, David Shumway, ed, The World of Leonard Cohen (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

February 4,  Jonathan Bernstein, What Do You Do When You're Lonesome: The Authorized Biography of Justin Townes Earle (Da Capo, Jan 2026) and Robert Morast, Cowpunk (a novel in progress).

February 18-- Brandon Tensley, Whitney Houston's I'm Your Baby Tonight (Bloomsbury, in progress) and Amani Roberts, The Quiet Storm: A Historical and Cultural Analysis of the Power, Passion and Pain of R&B Groups (Woodside), in conversation with Emily Lordi.

March 4 -- Areum Jeong, K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today

(University of Michigan Press), in conversation with Samantha James.

March 18 -- Andrew Berish, Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse (University of Chicago Press) and John Gennari, The Jazz Barn: Music Inn, The Berkshires, and the Place of Jazz in American Life (Brandeis University Press).

April 1--Clublands: Maren Hancock and Charity Marsh, eds, We Can Dance if We Want To: Canadian DJ Culture Turns Up (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, in progress) and Al Shipley, Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music (Repeater).

April 15 -- Dana Polan and Charles L. Granata, Hoboken to Hollywood: The American Places of Frank Sinatra (Reaktion, work in progress).

April 29--Daphne A. Brooks, ed, Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: Pop Culture and the Sonic (After)Lives of David Bowie and Prince (Duke University Press) and Griffin Woodworth, Prince, Musical Genre, and the Construction of Racial Identity (University of Michigan Press).

May 13-- Anabel Maler, Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music (Oxford University Press) and Jessica Holmes, Music at the Margins of Sense (University of Michigan Press).   

May 27-- Media Musicology: Gustavo Souza Marques (Gusmão), Tyler, The Creator’s Revolution: Beyond Gangsta (Bloomsbury) and Mike Levine, genealogy of Cuban reparto, and its intersections with bespoke media (University Press of Florida, in progress).

June 10 -- Will Kaufman, American Song and Struggle from World War II to MAGA (Cambridge University Press), in conversation with Gustavus Stadler.