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

*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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