In the last two decades, scholars writing from the disciplines of new musicology, cultural studies, sociology, feminist studies, ethnomusicology, and music theory have created an interdisciplinary body of work on popular music. Researchers have addressed many different musical styles, genres, and periods, but relatively few have investigated the popular music of the 1980s. Small wonder, since this decade has largely been dismissed as an era of big hair, bad clothes, and poor taste.

This conference acknowledges these existing aesthetic judgments, and will alternately confront and revel in these views. Pop icons and one-hit wonders, the rise of MTV and music videos, developments in media technology – these are all extremely significant phenomena in the recent history of American popular music. Additionally there seems to be a growing sense of nostalgia for the 1980s, as seen in the proliferation of specialized web sites, television shows, 80s club nights, 80s cover bands, and reunion tours.

The program committee invites proposals for papers, presentations, and performances of twenty minutes in duration that address the following topics:

• music and technology
• means of production and consumption
• cult of personality, icons and images
• fashion and music
• musical styles
• politics of music
• music and social movements
• commercial music
• gender and music