LitPop: Writing and Popular Music

Where cultural value was once sought for popular music through analogy with literature, or popular music and literary texts were seen as incompatible, writers and critics now borrow the demotic idioms of pop. Why?

Northumbria University will be hosting the LitPop Conference on 24 June 2011, this will take place in Lipman Building room 031 Lecture Theatre.

Keynote speakers include:

• Paul Farley (Professor of Poetry, Lancaster University, award-winning author of The Ice Age and Tramp in Flames,and The Electric Polyolbion)
• Gerry Smyth (Reader in Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, author of Music in Contemporary British Fiction: Listening to the Novel)
• Sheila Whiteley (Professor Emeritus, University of Salford, editor of Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender)

The organisers invite delegates to identify songs they would like to include as part of the conference playlist.
please send song proposals to az.litpop2011@northumbria.ac.uk

Making LitPop

• How has writing past and present been influenced by popular music, and vice versa? How have ‘literary’ texts appropriated the sounds and idioms of popular music? How have popular musicians invoked ‘literary’ texts, imagery and motifs in their work?
• How does writing construct or represent popular music cultures (fans, collectors, consumers, subcultures), industries (performers, moguls, producers), or histories and mythologies (through nostalgia, pastiche and memory)?
• What happens when a popular musician becomes a novelist or poet (or vice versa)?

Thinking LitPop

• What critical frameworks are appropriate for the analysis of popular music and fiction or non-fiction?
• Can we categorise writing in terms of the genres of popular music? Is there such a thing as a ‘jazz’, ‘hip-hop’, or ‘punk’ novel or poem?
• How do different genres of writing represent popular music differently? What is the function of the ‘literary soundtrack’ (charts and ‘mixtapes’ in novels, for example)? Are music criticism, journalism and biography ‘literary’? Can we speak of a ‘narratology’ of music biography, music journalism, blogging, fanzines or fan fiction? Should we listen to popular songs as ‘texts’?
• How do class-based, sexualised, gendered and racialized identities inform ‘litpop’?

Consuming LitPop

• In what ways have adaptations of literary texts in film or elsewhere employed popular music? How have representations of popular music (in music videos, for example) referenced literary forms? And how do songs, compilations or soundtracks brand writers and their work?
• Does relating popular music and literature confirm or disturb ideas of cultural hierarchy and status?
• To what extent are the politics and poetics of ‘literature’ and popular music complementary or conflicted?
• Given technological innovations, do writing and popular music share equally compromised or empowering modes of production and reception? 

The conference organisers – Rachel Carroll (Teesside University), Adam Hansen (Northumbria University), and Mel Waters (Northumbria University) – will be submitting an edited collection of selected papers for publication to the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.

Details

The conference cost £35 normal fee or £25 to students, to book online click here the deadline for booking is Friday 27 May 2011.

Delegates can also book accommodation online at the below link:
www.newcastlegateshead.com/LITPOP this link will take them automatically to NewcastleGateshead's Accommodation Booking Website, where they can select from a variety of accommodation.

For details on travelling to Newcastle, including campus maps please click here