Popular Music: Industry, Culture and Identity

Course aim

To provide students with the opportunity to examine critically from a cultural studies perspective, the role and significance of contemporary popular music as an expression and a vehicle of popular culture, identity and cultural belonging.

Course content

From a Cultural Studies perspective, this course examines the meanings that have been attached to popular music in everyday life. As a cultural phenomenon, pop music provides important insights into personal, group, national and local/global identities. Across the course we will examine the impact and interplay of new technologies, socio-political change and styles of marketing and distribution among the particular genres of popular music in Australia and international contexts.

Using a range of case studies and contemporary scholarship, the course will explore popular music as a contested cultural site; as both a multinational global industry and a personal vehicle of rebellion. Through a range of cultural, industrial and policy lenses, the course will explore issues including: identity-making and artistic expression in relation to concepts of gender, class, ethnicity and resistance; transnational record companies versus independent home-grown labels and scenes; the reproduction of youth and subcultures; how popular music is represented through the media and online; the iconography of celebrity and production of fan cultures; censorship, local creative economies and cultural policy; the impact of new technologies on recording, performance and distribution; and pop music as an archive for generational memory and the ways music nostalgia is produced, represented and consumed.

Textbook(s)

Nil

Prerequisite(s)

Successful completion of first year courses in MBAA

Corequisite(s)

Nil

Teaching method

Note: These components may or may not be scheduled in every study period. Please refer to the timetable for further details.

Assessment

Annotated bibliography, Critical analysis, Research paper

Fees

EFTSL*: 0.125
Commonwealth Supported program (Band 1)
To determine the fee for this course as part of a Commonwealth Supported program, go to:
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Fee-paying program for domestic and international students
International students and students undertaking this course as part of a postgraduate fee paying program must refer to the relevant program home page to determine the cost for undertaking this course.

Non-award enrolment
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* Equivalent Full Time Study Load. Please note: all EFTSL values are published and calculated at ten decimal places. Values are displayed to three decimal places for ease of interpretation.