[ecrea] Special Issue of Popular Music: The Critical Imperative

Special Issue of Popular Music: The Critical Imperative

This special issue will address what we call the critical imperative: 
the demand that academic writing on popular music place new primacy on 
sounds as made and heard, and for that writing to be styled in a way 
that foregrounds not just its academic rigour, but also imaginative 
description, creative interpretation and bold evaluation.

Scholarly publishing in the humanities is held hostage by the 
requirement to keep its bases covered and escape routes available. This 
caution--often reinforced by the peer review and editorial process--can 
elevate word count while limiting ambition, scope and argument; too 
often, exhaustive qualification crowds out provocative judgment, and the 
weight of scholarly precedent flattens unusual interpretation. Popular 
music studies is not immune, and the discipline has earned its place in 
the university through subscription to these standards. Yet that 
alignment also marks a rejection of the demotic and often radicalising 
critical discourses through which writers, fans and players have for a 
century intertwined popular music's sounds and meanings.

Meanwhile, new media have upended traditional journalistic practices and 
industries. The implications for professional criticism have been dire, 
and many music writers have sought a place in the university as a 
result, whether as professors, contingent labour, or students aspiring 
to full-time academic employment. But emerging platforms have also 
offered a new generation of commentators the freedom to explore popular 
music in new detail. Can we who work in popular music studies learn from 
this influx of critical nous, and take the opportunity to reconsider the 
field's standards of thought, argument and expression?

Can we afford not to? Calls to prove the worth of the academic project 
come from funders and policy makers; they come from uninitiated readers 
baffled to find music they love written about in such an alien 
(sometimes alienating) way. Now is a good time to reassess and perhaps 
reshape these critical discourses.

But this is not a call for the simple translation of journalistic or 
blog practice into an academic context, or for the total overhaul of 
scholarly technique. Everyday writing can rarely observe the standards 
of sourcing and argumentation that gives academic work its claim to 
credibility and its nuance. Deep research, critical (self) reflection, 
sophisticated argument, accurate citation: we should celebrate these as 
techniques of value. Nevertheless, we imagine a new kind of academic 
writing is possible, one in which the rigour of scholarly practice 
combines with the interpretive attitude and formal experimentation found 
in the best popular criticism. Could authors find ways of acknowledging 
and working with the extant literature on their subjects without letting 
long reviews of that work sap their writing's energy? Could linear 
narrative and cumulative argumentation be productively disturbed or 
fragmented? Might the exhortation to explore new kinds of expressive and 
descrip
tive vocabularies lead writers into innovative areas of thought?

We seek contributions that will take these ideas as the basis of an 
experiment in academic writing. Prospective authors should focus their 
efforts on the thoughtful criticism of music and ideas, using lively 
language and direct argument. We demand reading, rigour and standard 
source citation, but also that scholarly scaffolding does not become the 
construction itself. Most of all we demand that most precious of 
critical qualities, concision: pieces published will be no longer than 
6000 words in length, including (minimal) endnotes and bibliography.

The issue editors will be Tom Perchard (Goldsmiths, University of 
London) and Devon Powers (Drexel University). In the first instance, 
abstracts of 200 words should be sent to (t.perchard /at/ gold.ac.uk) by March 
27th 2015. These will be reviewed by the Editors and Editorial Group of 
the journal, and full article contributions invited for a deadline of 
December 15th 2015. Articles will then be subject to peer review.



---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chaussee de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------