Former GW Graduate Students Editing Collection on Post 9/11 Music
Joseph Fisher and Brian Flota, who describe themselves as “surely two of the department’s most handsome students,” are collaborating on a collection of essays entitled “Catastrophe and the Cure”: The Politics of Post-9/11 Music. Their call for papers reads in part:
In current debates about the War in Iraq, it has become commonplace for politicians and journalists to conjure the specter of the Vietnam War as a means of quantifying the impact of the current war in American culture and throughout the world. Surprisingly, though, few have scrutinized these comparisons to examine the differences between the popular music of the Vietnam era and the music of the current post-9/11 era. While the Vietnam era found countless bands and musicians responding in protest to that war, there has arguably been a significantly smaller amount of contemporary musicians who have taken overt stances, in their music, about the politics of post-9/11 life, in America and elsewhere.
“Catastrophe and the Cure”: The Politics of Post-9/11 Music is the title of a proposed anthology examining “post-9/11” music. Abstracts are sought for articles attempting to theorize what post-9/11 music is, if such a category can be said to exist, and what political action it takes (or needs to take), if any. Proposed articles should be theoretically engaged and should be written with an academic readership in mind. Of particular interest are abstracts that seek to extend discussions of post-9/11 music beyond the bands/musicians/albums—U2, The Rising, The Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith, etc.—typically associated with 9/11.
Read the entire CFP here. Personally I can’t say if Fisher and Flota really are among our most handsome students (like all undergraduate English majors, all graduate students in English are as good looking as they are frighteningly smart: this combination of traits is listed in our requirements, go check) — but I will say that they demonstrate in their scholarship and teaching what is best about our graduate program.
