Syllabus/achievement requirements

Required texts:

  • Paul Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2006);
  • David Brackett, ed., The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader: Histories and Debates, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

All other reading material (below) will be placed on Canvas:

  • David Simonelli, “Society, Culture, and Music in Britain before 1963,” in Simonelli, Working Class Heroes: Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013), 1-13.
  • Randall J. Stephens, “Pentecostalism and Rock ’n’ Roll in the 1950s,” in Stephens, The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 27-64.
  • Peter Guralnick, “The World Turned Upside Down,” in Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (London: Abacus, 1994), 257-275.
  • Lucy O'Brien, “The Real Thing: Motown, Spector, and '60s Svengalis,” in She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop, and Soul (New York: Penguin, 1996), 65-97.
  • Jason Guriel, "How Pet Sounds Invented the Modern Pop Album," The Atlantic, May 16, 2016, 1-3.
  • Ben Ratliff, “Looking for the Beach Boys,” NYR Daily, October 26, 2016, 1-4.
  • Ian MacDonald, “Introduction: Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade,” in Revolution in the Head: The Beatles and the Sixties (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2007), 1-37.
  • Sean Wilentz, “Darkness at the Break of Noon: The Concert at Philharmonic Hall, New York City, October 31, 1964,” in Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 87-104.
  • Joan Didion, “Where the Kissing Never Stops,” in Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (New York: Farrar Straus, and Giroux, 1968), 42-60.
  • Brian Ward, “‘Our day will come’: Black Pop, White Pop, and the Sounds of Integration,” in Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (London: UCL Press, 1998), 123-169.
  • Suzanne E. Smith, “‘Can’t Forget the Motor City,’” in Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) 1-20.
  • Michael J. Kramer, “‘We Are KMPX FM Rock, Complete with All the Contradictions,’” in Kramer, The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 67-93.
  • Kelefa Sanneh, “The Persistence of Prog Rock,” The New Yorker, June 19, 2017, 1-15.
  • Simon Reynolds, Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century (London: Faber & Faber, 2016), 1-12.
  • Ian Buruma, “The Invention of David Bowie,” New York Review of Books, March 23, 2013, 1-8.
  • Alice Echols, “The Homo Superiors: Disco and the Rise of Gay Macho,” in Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (New York: WW Norton, 2010), 121-157.
  • Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 156-196.
  • Simon Reynolds, “New Gold Dreams, 81-82-83-84: New Pop’s Peak, the Second British Invasion of America, and the Rise of MTV,” in Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk, 1978-1984 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 332-351.
Published May 27, 2019 6:31 PM - Last modified May 27, 2019 6:31 PM