News

UPCOMING

28-30 July 2017: “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” Keynote Address, Summer of Love 50th Anniversary Conference, Northwestern University | San Francisco.

Fall 2017: Digital Humanities Conference, Université de La Rochelle, France.

PAST

2017:

May 2017: “Dancing Across the Proscenium,” Review of Katherine Profeta’s Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance, Theater 47, 1 (2017).

19 May 2017: “Folk Folksonomies: Studying the Folk Music Revival Through Digital History,” TeachX 2017, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

26 April 2017: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Review of Jack Hamilton, Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, in The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, 2017.

21 April 2017, 3-4 pm: New Forms for Dance Writing, Hosted by Audience Architects, Lake FX CreativeCon, Chicago Cultural Center, Fl 1 – Garland Rm. The decline of traditional media outlets investing in dance criticism has resulted in writers, artists and publicists exploring new platforms for critical and evaluative discourse. This panel discussion will outline current and emerging trends in dance and performance art criticism and suggest un- or under-explored venues for writing and talking about movement-based art forms.

14 April 2017: Respondent, The Popular And/In History, Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University.

2016:

16 September 2016: “Open Access Folk Revival: Technologies of Tradition at the Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival—and Beyond,” Southern Folklife Collection Research Fellow Talk, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

20 May 2016: “Glitching the Folk: Data Deformance for Historical Inquiry,” DHChicago: New Archival Knowledges Symposium, Macroanalysis & the Humanities Working Group, University of Chicago.

5-8, 12-15 May 2016: The Seldoms, RockCitizen, Storefront Theater, Chicago.

12 May 2016, 6-7:30 pm: What is Dance Dramaturgy? featuring Bonnie Brooks, Michael Kramer, and Dassia Posner, and organized by Lizzie Leopold, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University.

13 May 2016, 3:30-5 pm: “A Body Bridges Past to Present: Intersections of Dance and History,” Lake FX: Summit + Expo, Chicago Cultural Center, FREE.

Keynote Address, “Inside Outside: On the Significance of the Trips Festival” @ The 1960s Revisited: The Significance of the Trips Festival,” Contemporary Jewish Museum/California Historical Society, San Francisco, 22 January 2016.

2015:

“Use Your ‘Noodle’: Thinking about Intradisciplinarity at NUHDL, the Northwestern University Digital Humanities Laboratory,” with Jillana Enteen, Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities & Computer Science, University of Chicago, 15 November 2015.

The Seldoms: RockCitizen @ Chicago Humanities Festival: Citizens, Benito Juarez Community Academy Auditorium, 08 November 2015.

Citizen Folklorist: Alan Lomax’s Musical Journeys @ Chicago Humanities Festival: Citizens, Old Town School of Folk Music, 04 November 2015.

How To Get Power: The Seldoms Dance with LBJ and the 1960s @  Jay and Linda Grunin Center for the Arts, Ocean County College, Tom’s River, NJ, preshow talk for Power Goes, 23 October 2015.

“‘A Tiny Banner Against the Inhumanities of the Technocracy’: Unfurling Theodore Roszak’s Countercultural Social Criticism,” Society of United States Intellectual History (SUSIH) Conference, Washington DC, 17 October 2015.

“What Do You See? The Kassonian Art of Cultural Observation,” Cultural History and Its Publics: A Symposium on the Occasion of the Retirement of John Kasson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 3 October 2015.

“Contemporary Dance And/As Public History: The Seldoms Bring LBJ and the 1960s Into the Present in Their Investigation of How Power Goes,” Not Even Past, 14 September 2015.

“The Culture Wars Are History,” Society of United States Intellectual History Blog, 4 September 2014.

“War! What Is It Good For? As A Metaphor, A Lot,” review of Andrew Hartman’s A War For the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, The National Memo, 28 June 2015.

“Responding To Violence: Salcedo and Cytter,” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago MCA DNA Blog, 21 May 2015.

“Moving History: From Archive to Stage in The Seldoms’s Power Goes,” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago MCA DNA Blog, 24 March 2015.

“Dance and Intellectual History,” Society of United States Intellectual History Blog, 18 March 2015.

“How To Get Power: The Seldoms Dance with LBJ,” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago MCA DNA Blog, 17 March 2015.

“Stuart Hall’s Hippies,” presented at the 2015 International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US (IASPM-US) Conference, Louisville, KY, February 2015.

2014:

Keynote address, “Here Beside the Rising Tide: The Dead, the Counterculture, and American Democracy,” at So Many Roads: The World in the Grateful Dead Conference and Symposium, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 8 November 2014.

“The Meaning of Ideology: A Cultural Historian’s Perspective (Expanded Edition),” Society of United States Intellectual History Blog, 5 November 2014.

Panelist, “The Ideology Problem in Teaching and Scholarship,” at Society for United States Intellectual History Conference, 9 October 2014, Indianapolis, IN.

Review of Mark Kurlansky, Ready For a Brand New Beat: How “Dancing in the Street” Became the Anthem for a Changing America, in The American Historian, Fall 2014.

Curated Music Mixes and Essay for An Artists’ Congress @ The Block Museum, Northwestern University, 17 May 2014.

Review of Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture in American Political Thought 3, 1 (Spring 2014).

Moderator, Various panels, The Seldoms, Exit Disclaimer: Science and Fiction Ahead, Northwestern University, 22-27 April 2014.

Fresno State University History Department Guest Lectures, 21-22 March 2014:

  • Undergraduate Honors Society Keynote Address: The Republic of Rock – Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture
  • 16th Annual History Graduate Student Symposium Keynote: Analog Music -> Digital History – Sights and Sounds from the Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project

Review of Rachel Rubin, Well Met: Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture in Journal of American History 100, 4 (March 2014), 1290-1291.

Review of Nadya Zimmerman, Counterculture Kaleidoscope: Musical and Cultural Perspectives on Late Sixties San Francisco in Journal for the Study of Radicalism 8, 1 (Spring 2014).

Chair and Commentator, “Digital Historiography and the Archives,” 2014 American Historical Association Conference, Washington DC, comments published in guest post on the AHA Blog, 21 January 2014.

2013:

Brown University, American Studies Guest Lectures, 2-3 December 2013:

“Looking Back: Christopher Lasch and the Role of the Social Critic,” The Point 7, Fall 2013. Plus “Reflections on Christopher Lasch’s Reflections” and “Liberation Struggles,” US Intellectual History Blog.

“The sounds of American counterculture and citizenship,” Oxford University Press Blog, 8 October 2013.

Podcast Interview about The Republic of Rock with Ray Haberski.

The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (Oxford University Press, 2013).

“Old, Slow, and Human: Digital History From Archive to Argument,” American Library Association (ALA) Conference, 30 June 2013, Chicago, IL.

“Analog Music -> Digital History: Teaching the US Folk Music Revival on a Networked WordPress Platform,” Multimedia Learning Center (MMLC), Northwestern University, 15 March 2013.

“Alan Lomax, Harry Smith, and the Proto-Digital Study of Folk Music” Research Presentation, Northwestern University Digital Humanities Laboratory (NUDHL), 8 March 2013.

The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture Book Talk, Northwestern University John Evans Alumni Center, 8 March 2013.

2012:

“Rocktimism?: Pop Music Writing in the Age of Rock Criticism,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 24, 4 (December 2012): 590-600.

WordPress for the Humanities: Developing a Digital History Course, Northwestern University Library Scholarly Research and Technology Series (SRTS).

2011:

Making History in a Virtual Archive, presentation about The Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival project, at HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) Conference, December 2011 and the DHCS (Chicago Digital Humanities and Computer Science) Colloquium, November 2011.

Review of Life Flows On in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History by Robert Wells in Journal of American History 97, 4 (March 2011), 1102.

2010:

Discussion about the state of U.S. Intellectual History, U.S. Intellectual History Blog.

Cameo in Thomas Conner’s article about university and college rock music courses, “Rock music 101,” Chicago Sun-Times.

2009:

Blog for The Engaged Humanities Scholar as Public Intellectual, a research workshop, co-sponsored by the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and the Center for Civic Engagement, convened at Northwestern University.

Review of Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era Exhibition, in Journal of American History 96, 1 (June 2009).

2008:

“Infinity Goes Up on Trial: The Questioning of Psychedelic Art at the Whitney Museum,” review of the art exhibition “Summer of Love: Art of the Pyschedelic Era,” in The Sixties: A Journal of History Politics, and Culture 1, 1 (2008).

Video excerpt from “‘Entertainment Vietnam’: The Civics of Rock Music in the Vietnam-American War (and the Return of the Cultural Turn),” my presentation at the March 2008 OAH Conference, appears on Rick Shenkman’s History News Network blog (note: scroll down to view video). We were all a bit bleary-eyed at 8am on a Sunday morning, but like Hendrix on the final morning of Woodstock, we performed nonetheless. Thanks to fellow participants on the panel “War at the Crossroads: Rethinking Memory, Culture, and Conflict in Vietnam”: Meredith Lair, Erik B. Villard, and chair Marilyn Young.

2007:

“The Psychedelic Public and Its Problems: Rock Music Festivals and Civil Society in the Sixties Counterculture,”in Media and Public Spheres, ed. Richard Butsch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

2005:

“The Multitrack Model: Cultural History and the Interdisciplinary Study of Popular Music,” in Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines, edited by Jeffrey H. Jackson and Stanley C. Pelkey (University Press of Mississippi, 2005).

Review of Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock ‘n’ Roll, Kandia Crazy Horse, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), in Journal of Popular Music Studies 17, 3 (December 2005), pp. 352-361.

“Listen, Do You Want to Know a Secret? When the Subterranean Went Pop,” review of Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan’s Art by Mike Marqusee and Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History by Devin McKinney, H-1960s, H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online Discussion Listserv (June 2005).

“To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn: The Pivot of the Sixties,” review of Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the Emergence of the Postmodern by Marianne Dekoven, H-1960s, H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online Discussion Listserv (March 2005).

Review of Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place by John Connell and Chris Gibson, eds., Journal of Popular Music and Society (February 2005).

2003:

Cameo, “Funny Folk: Rethinking Purity in the U.S. Folk Revival” discussed in Alex Ross, “Rock 101,” New Yorker, 14/21 July 2003.

Cameo, Layla Cooper’s excellent essay, “One-Track Mind: Is Record Collecting Really Just a Guy Thing?”, Bitch Magazine 20, Spring 2003 (note: article not online; only print edition available).

Journalism

“War! What Is It Good For? As A Metaphor, A Lot—Andrew Hartman, A War For the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars,” The National Memo, 28 June 2015.

“Responding To Violence: Salcedo and Cytter,” MCA DNA Blog, 21 May 2015.

“Looking Back: Christopher Lasch and the Role of the Social Critic,” The Point 7, Fall 2013.

“The Sounds of American Counterculture and Citizenship,” Oxford University Press Blog, 8 October 2013.

“Wild Fire in the ‘Burbs: Arcade Fire’s The SuburbsFirst of the Month, July 2011.

“Various Artists, Rogue’s Gallery,” Pop Matters, 20 October 2006.

“Luna, The Best Of Luna and Lunafied,” Pop Matters, 19 October 2006.

“Norfolk and Western, A Gilded Age,” Pop Matters, 22 June 2006.

“Tengir-Too, Music of Central Asia, Volume 1: Mountain Music of Kyrgyzstan,” Pop Matters, 7 June 2006.

“Quasi, When The Going Gets Dark,” Pop Matters, 26 May 2006.

“Tortoise and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, The Brave and the Bold,” Pop Matters, 29 March 2006.

“Hall Ranaldo Hooker, Oasis of Whispers,” Pop Matters, 21 March 2006.

“Konono No. 1, Congotronics,” Pop Matters, 26 January 2006.

“Deconstructing the ‘Indestructible’ Beat: A Duke ethnomusicology professor explores how sound and society interact in a South African recording studio,” IndyWeek, 25 February 2004.

“Preview Mode: Surveying National Releases,” IndyWeek, 17 December 2003.

“In Melodious Euets: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings,” IndyWeek, 15 October 2003.

“‘As You Stare Into the Vacuum of His Eyes’: In the urban canyons of New York City, the hollers of Kentucky, the mountains of Peru, New Lost City Rambler John Cohen photographs ‘folk’ music’s impenetrable mysteries,” IndyWeek, 16 July 2003.

“Whereto, Indie Rock: Our critic examines Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Quasi and Unwound to answer the question: Is Something Invisible Gone?” IndyWeek, 12 September 2001.

“Rebecca Gates, Ruby Series,” IndyWeek, 29 August 2001.

“Greg Osby’s Jazz Solution: The renowned alto sax interpreter brings the jazz past and future together via his adventurous, hard-grooving quartet,” IndyWeek, 13 June 2001.

“Ladybug Transistor, Argyle Heir,” IndyWeek, 30 May 2001.

“Hitting the Pavement Running: Stephen Malkmus goes solo, but it’s still indie rock to me,” IndyWeek, 21 March 2001.

“‘Have You Ever Written A Folk Song? I Have, I Have’: ‘Sis’ Cunningham, Gordon Friesen and Broadside Magazine,” IndyWeek, 14 February 2001.

“Five Degrees Below Zero: A Unique Spin on Five Pop Culture Phenomena,” Indyweek, 25 July 2001.

“Five Degrees Below Zero: A Unique Spin on Five Pop Culture Phenomena,” Indyweek, 2 May 2001.

“King Sunny Ade, Seven Degrees North,” Salon, 5 June 2000.

“Corresponding With the Past: Letters of the Century: America 1900-1999 edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler,” Newsday, 19 December 1999 (PDF).

“The Other Hoboken Singer With Mob Ties: Making the Wiseguys Weep: The Jimmy Roselli Story by David Evanier,” Newsday, 3 December 1999 (PDF).

“That Devil Music: Flowers In the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977 by James Miller,” Newsday, 1 August 1999 (PDF).

“Trying On New Names to Plumb the Mystery of ‘I’,” New York Times, 25 April 1999 (PDF).

“Homemade Psychedelia For Modern Times: Talking Music with Olivia Tremor Control,” NYTimes.com, July 1999.

“The Voices of Popular Music: Visions of Jazz: The First Century by Gary Giddens and Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists From Vaudeville to Techno by Robert Christgau,” Newsday, 17 January 1999 (PDF).

“Hawaii’s History, By Chapter and Verse—The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative by W. S. Merwin,” Newsday, 8 October 1998 (PDF).

“Luna, The Days of Our Nights,” Spectator, Fall 1998 (PDF).

“Of Jazz and Self: Living With Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings edited by Robert G. O’Meally and If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday by Farah Jasmine Griffin,” Jazziz, December 1998 (PDF).

“Intersections Ahead: Future Jazz by Howard Mandel,” Jazziz, November 1998 (PDF).

“They All Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano…: Cooper-Moore,” Jazziz, September 1998 (PDF).

“Michael Brecker, Nearness of You: The Ballad Book,” Jazziz, August 1998 (PDF).

“Rock and Roll Radio Is For Kids: Hot Chocolate With ‘Greasy Kid Stuff’,” Citysearch New York, Summer 1998.

“Various Artists, At Home With the Groove Box,” VH1.com, 16 February 2000 (PDF).

“William Parker, Mayor of Punkville and Painter’s Spring,” VH1.com, 23 August 2000 (PDF).

“Fela Kuti, Coffin for Head of State/Unknown Soldier,” VH1.com, 22 June 2000 (PDF).

“Patti Smith’s Punk Improvisations at Music Critic’s Memorial,” Sonicnet, 25 November 1997 (PDF).

“Lucinda Williams, Pete Seeger Sing Praises of Folkways Records,” Sonicnet, 6 May 1997 (PDF).