Norma Coates

Biography

I am jointly appointed to the Faculty of Media and Information Studies and the Department of Music History in the Don Wright Faculty of Music. In FIMS, I teach in the undergraduate program in Media, Information and Technoculture and the Graduate Program in Media Studies. My MIT classes explore popular music and its intersections with subjectivity and with the products of other culture industries. My classes for the DWFOM explore the cultural history of genres and performers as well as the historical and current music industry. I am closely involved with launching and implementing Western’s new interdisciplinary M.A. in Popular Music and Culture.

Research Interest

My research interests span several areas, all of them unified by a link to popular music. I have published several articles about how gender is constructed by and in the material practices of popular music cultures. I am currently at work on a book for Duke University Press about popular music on American network television from 1956, when Elvis Presley burst on the cultural scene, to 1981, when the cable channel was introduced. The book is a cultural and industrial history that focuses on the interaction and interchange between the music and television industries during formative times in the development of both. I am interested in the influence each had on the other in terms of production, content, and representation. My future projects, currently in the formative stages, include a cultural history of periodic outbursts of "years of the women" in popular music and criticism, and an exploration of age, subjectivity, and popular music.