Archive for 2023

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[Commlist] CFP: special issue on Courtney Love and Hole

Wed Jun 14 19:07:51 GMT 2023






*Special Issue of /Rock Music Studies/: Courtney Love and Hole*

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Editors: Debra Ferreday and Rhianon Jones

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Hole’s epoch-defining album /Live Through This/, /Rock Music Studies/invites article proposals for a special edition that examines the cultural legacy of Courtney Love and Hole.


For the editors, this project emerged from a shared appreciation for the work and star persona of Courtney Love. Love has always occupied a complex position in popular culture: a key figure of the 1990s, she is continually shattering and disrupting the misogynistic narratives imposed upon her; if she has received – or personally courted – any kind of attention, it is usually the wrong kind. As a star figure who emerged from the alternative music scene in the 1990s, she became the target of misogyny from the music press, from her husband’s fans and, in fact, from some feminists. As a musician, she dissociates herself from overtly politicized forms of cultural production, preferring to appropriate and disrupt the figure of the (white, male) rock star. Since the ’90s, she has emerged as a complex figure: fashion muse, feminist, early Weinstein whistleblower, guardian of cultural memory, and a sometimes shrewd, sometimes naïve early adopter of social media.


Yet she is irreducible to any of these labels, a disruptor who constantly shatters all attempts to contain and make sense of her. As such, she speaks to the multiple ways that the ‘90s, far from being constrained to the past, haunt and resonate in contemporary culture. By thinking with Courtney, we can shed light on key questions of gender, race, power, violence, and self-making that are not relegated to the past but haunt contemporary figurings of voice, embodiment, performance, and celebrity. Love’s ongoing struggle to have a voice, and the fragmented, contradictory but ultimately powerful nature of that voice is, we argue, emblematic of a wider struggle that continues to reverberate in the present moment.

Whilst we are interested in Love as a media figure, we also welcome papers that center her musical legacy. Alongside the recent re-evaluation of her treatment by the media of the ’90s has come a re-evaluation of Hole’s contribution to rock music.


We welcome papers that situate themselves within the cultural moment and consider music alongside their lyrics, fashion, their reception, and audience engagement. We wish to avoid papers that simply focus on the misogynistic culture of the music industry, the treatment of female musicians or papers that particularly focus on recovering Courtney Love as a much-maligned figure. In /Pitchfork/’s retrospective 10 out of 10 review of /Live Through This/(1994), Sasha Geffen writes that Love makes an unprecedented incursion into the canon on male rock stars: “a famous woman who screams for a living” in “raw, diaphagmatic bellows” that shatter and puncture the male-dominated rock canon. Love is seen as a provocateur and truth-teller whose lyrics are “analytical, no matter how viscerally she howls them”; although grounded in collective and personal trauma, their insightfulness transcends the merely confessional.

*OVER*

Contributions might consider, but are not limited to, the following topics:

·Courtney Love and Hole in relation to the current moment of 1990s revival

·The movement to re-center women’s actual cultural production over concerns of celebrity and representation

·Hole, Love and the ‘90s seen through intersections of gender identity, sexuality, race and ethnicity, class, dis/ability

·Analyses of Love the musician and artist

·Hole’s contributions to rock music

·Music, celebrity, and stardom

·Media forms and platforms: digital and analogue cultures, affect, material culture and their relationship to media consumption and media archives

·Remembering, nostalgia and revisionings of the ‘90s

·Fandoms and fan engagement with music/texts

·Music and narratives of social and cultural change


Potential contributors should first submit an abstract of approximately 500 words and a brief CV by October 15, 2023. Authors selected for inclusion will be invited to submit manuscripts of 6,000-8,000 words by April 15, 2024. All essays will be peer-reviewed using a double-blind process.


Please send all abstracts and communications regarding this project to (d.ferreday /at/ lancaster.ac.uk).



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