CFP: Dance, Music and Popular Culture edition of the Popular Culture Studies Journal

Volume Editors: Darryl K. Clark and R. Christian Phillips

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Abstract and CV Due: April 30, 2025

Initial Final Paper Due: November 30, 2025

Overview

In a robust conversation about dance and music, the connection of dance with identity stands large, whether it is self-identity or identifying with one’s community and culture.

This relationship with dance connects to the music that is provided for a broad variety of social, sacred, and performative activities.

This special issue considers the varied, and, at times, volatile relationship between dance and dance music, which has often become foundational in defining a culture, a subculture, or a social grouping. Particularly for Western Culture in the United States, music welcomes both participants and newcomers into so many spaces, from the church to the theatre to the club and even to the streets. Coupled together with dance, these pathways have been used to celebrate an event or milestone, delineate a social hierarchy, provide social commentary, decolonize a mindset, demand change of any kind, or resist oppression; the infinite ability of music and dance to move people and spur action depends only on the time, the place, and the bodies engaged in making the sounds and doing the moving.

This special music/dance issue of PCSJ seeks to explore the wide variety of relationships music and dance have built within popular culture in the United States. By considering these relationships, we can gain a clearer and more complete understanding of the individual and the various groups represented by that individual, highlighting the impact identity and expression of identity has upon popular music, whether it is mainstream or alternative, and the physicalizing of identity to the sound of music. Moving to a beat is one of the first actions we engage in as a child and remains a significant part of social and personal engagement throughout our lifetime. Even for those who cannot do either with any appreciable skill, music and dance has the power to help demarcate their personal identity and provide connections to the groups and cultural markers which add meaning to their lives.

This special issue will start a larger conversation about the importance of dance and music when considered through their interconnections. Although they are most often studied as separate entities, these art forms become much greater than the sum of their parts when explored through those connections and in how they build both upon and through each other. Furthermore, this issue will explore how integrated and integral dance and music is within US culture, so ubiquitous that they can often be overlooked, seen as nothing more than just the supporting cast. Whether it is history, politics, economics, entertainment, or any other important cultural element being studied, dance and music have, at some point, made an impact, spurred a change, or been instrumental in its continuation. This special issue will provide an opportunity to see and explore and celebrate the great impact dance and music have had on popular culture. 

Potential Topics 

We invite papers that examine the intersections of dance/music relationships and popular culture that are related, but not limited to, the following:

• Music Created for Dance Instruction

• Dance Instruction in Lyrics

• Disco

• 20th century Dance TV Shows – National or Regional

• 21st Century Dance/Competition TV Shows

• World Music/Dance Forms

• Liturgical Dance/Music Forms

• Dance/Music Relationships within Religious Practice

• Hip-hop

• Electronic Dance Music

• The role of the Caller in Social Dance Forms (eg. Line Dancing, Square Dance)

• Internet Dance Crazes/Personalities

• Soundies, Short Subjects, and MTV

• Dance and Music in Open or Non-Traditional Spaces

The editors of this journals invite submissions of up to 500 words in length for consideration.  Please include a bio with the abstract.

Editor Bios

Darryl K. Clark

DARRYL CLARK, BA, Columbia College Chicago, MFA, SUNY College at Brockport, has a lifelong interest in the rich and ongoing relationship of dance and dance music. This relationship runs the gamut from dance created for a variety of theatrical spaces to the dance of community spaces like dance clubs and family living rooms. This interest informs his research at present as he looks at the placement of dance inside feature films, the creation of music for dance by a variety of music artists and his teaching as Associate Professor, Musical Theatre Dance at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

R. Christian Phillips

R. Christian Phillips, BA, Capital University, MA, University of Chicago, is a doctoral candidate at Bowling Green State University who teaches in the Women’s Studies and American Culture Studies departments. His research interests include representations of female equality in Gilded Age American novels, 19th and 20th century US and British literature as historical documents, changes to the American Social Dance Floor, the Mitford Sisters, and integrating dance as an element of the larger study of modern cultural history. He has presented his work at various national and international conferences. As a younger man, he was a professional Scottish Highland Dancer and danced with numerous local folk dance groups, include New England Contra, Square, Scottish and English Country, and clogging.