MUSIC 6252

Pop Music in the Archive: Researching Subcultures of the Recent Past

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

Using Cornell University Library’s extensive archival collections on punk, hip hop, electronic music and EDM, this course will introduce students to the practice and theory of archival research on these music subcultures from the 1970s to early 2000s. Through a focus on primary sources, students will engage directly with the history of these genres and develop the critical skills for evaluating and working with different types of artifacts (including correspondence, photographs, flyers and posters, business records, recordings, contemporaneous newspapers and magazines). The course will also consider topics such as: ethical approaches to working with communities of living people; the sustainability and futurity of community controlled and institutional archives; and how archivists and archival repositories identify, appraise, acquire, describe, and provide public access to materials. Guest speakers may include musicians who have placed their personal archives at Cornell, and pop music journalists and biographers who have used the archives in their work, and other curators and community archivists. Some familiarity with popular music history from 1960-2000 is required.

Enrollment Information REF-F25 Open to: graduate students and upper-level undergraduates.

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