2012 EMP Pop Conference

Koushik Banerjea is a lecturer in postcolonial theory in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has written extensively about popular culture, music and film for Postcolonial Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies and Theory, Culture and Society.   Abstract: | | "Cities of the Dead: Soundscaping Race, Memory and Desire in a Forgotten London" In the drab, shabby England of the late 1970s, early 1980s, its popular... Read More →

Banning Eyre is an author, guitarist, radio producer, journalist, and Senior Editor at afropop.org. His work with the public radio series Afropop Worldwide has taken him to over a dozen African countries to research local music, especially guitar styles. He comments on world music for NPR’s All Things Considered. He is now editing a cultural biography about Thomas Mapfumo and the history of Zimbabwe.   Abstract: | | "Cairo... Read More →

Wills Glasspiegel is a graduate student in Media, Culture and Communications at NYU. He also manages Shangaan Electro and produces public radio documentaries about music.   Abstract: | | "Beyoncé's Afro-Future: Power and Play in 'Run the World (Girls)'" Metropolitan musical practice in the United States today is increasingly marked by complex networks of interlaced and overlapping cultural repertories of sound, music and... Read More →

Emily Lordi is an assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her book, Black Resonance (forthcoming from Rutgers UP), re-examines the work of African American writers like Richard Wright and Nikki Giovanni through their engagements with classic black women singers. She has served as a book review editor for Callaloo and is currently the editor of exhibitions at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Her next book will be a... Read More →

Martin Scherzinger is associate professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. His research specializes in sound studies, musical culture, media and politics.   Abstract: | | "Beyoncé's Afro-Future: Power and Play in 'Run the World (Girls)'" Metropolitan musical practice in the United States today is increasingly marked by complex networks of interlaced and overlapping cultural repertories of sound, music... Read More →

Gayle Wald is writing a book on the TV show Soul! She teaches at George Washington University and is the author of Shout, Sister, Shout!, a biography of Rosetta Tharpe.   Abstract: | | "'Deliver De Letter': 'Please Mr. Postman,' the Marvelettes, and the Afro-Caribbean Imaginary" Berry Gordy touted Motown as the “Sound of Young America,” thereby insisting that black sounds—specifically the sounds of African American... Read More →