[ecrea] CFP: Death and the rock star

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

*Death and the Rock Star*

The recent untimely deaths of Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston, and the 
resurrection of Tupac Shakur for a performance at the Coachella music 
festival, have focused the media spotlight, yet again, on the 
relationship between rock, popular music and death. The 'sex, drugs and 
rock'n'roll' lifestyle has left many casualties in its wake. Over time, 
however, as the ranks of dead musicians have grown, so the types of 
death involved and the reactions to them have diversified. Conversely, 
as the artists who were at the forefront of the rock'n'roll revolution 
of the 1950s and 1960s continue to age, the idea of dying young and 
leaving a beautiful corpse (which gave rise, for instance, to the myth 
of the '27 Club'), no longer carries the same resonance that it once 
might have.

This volume will examine the cultural meanings associated with popular 
music artists and death, and the editors invite contributions on this 
theme. We are particularly interested in exploring how dead singers' 
music and memories live on, how the media portray a singer's death, how 
a singer's death is absorbed by fans and other artists, how death 
generates new memories and nostalgia, and how death can be 'used' by 
different social, music and fan groups for different purposes.

An edited collection will be submitted to Ashgate, who have already 
expressed a keen interest in the proposal. It is anticipated that 
contributions from international scholars such as Andy Bennett (most 
recently editor of /Britpop and the English Music Tradition/, Ashgate, 
2010) and Olivier Julien (editor of /Sgt Pepper and the Beatles/, 
Ashgate, 2008) will be included.

Proposals for chapters are invited exploring any of the following themes 
(this list is by no means exhaustive):


   * Different kinds of death: accidental deaths, suicides, spectacular
     deaths, quiet deaths, death from 'natural' causes and 'old age';
   * Life beyond death: impersonators, song covers, tributes, fan
     culture and memory work;
   * Death and worship: comparisons with sainthood, 'pilgrimages' to
     cemeteries;
   * Death and new media: availability of songs and performance through
     YouTube; accessibility of the past;
   * Legacies of rock stars: what happens to their music (re-issues,
     'lost' recordings); how the music is incorporated into cultural
     memory (e.g. through film soundtracks);
   * Forgetting: deaths that fail to make a lasting impression,
     rediscovery and new embodiments of 'lost' artists;
   * Memory and nostalgia: retromania, cultural 'discoveries' of the
     past; generational tastes, passing down music tastes; recuperating
     one's youth
   * Gender: differences in death between male and female stars (the
     tragic female?);
   * Death, place and identity: the importance of the geographical
     locations where artists lived and died;
   * Memorialisation, prestige and institutionalisation: the
     incorporation of popular music stars into official discourse;
     museums and tourist sites dedicated to artists (thanatotourism).

We welcome contributions from outside the 'rock' canon, and particularly 
from non-Anglophone music cultures.



Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent to the editors, 
Catherine Strong ((catherine.strong /at/ monash.edu) 
<mailto:(catherine.strong /at/ monash.edu)>) and Barbara Lebrun 
((barbara.lebrun /at/ manchester.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(barbara.lebrun /at/ manchester.ac.uk)>) no later than 15 July 2012. 
Acceptance of articles will be advised by 15 October 2012 and completed 
chapters will be required by 1 September 2013.