This issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies will attempt to move beyond conceptual frameworks that assume a fixed identity for performers and audience as simply gay or straight. Popular music, particularly from the turn-of-the-century onward, has provided an arena where marginalized voices could be heard and sexual identities shaped, reformed, and experimented with. This has been true for both performers and audiences, both of whom have historically been invested in the reframing of sexual behaviors through popular music. In this issue of JPMS, we are particularly interested in publishing essays that bypass oversimplified binaries like gay performer/straight audience to explore moments when sexual boundaries have been challenged or renegotiated to include or exclude LGBT/Q subjects. We also seek submissions that recognize sexuality as determining -- and determined by -- other facets of identity. How have race and ethnicity inflected queer performance? How has queer performance challenged class identification? How have performers and audiences articulated multiple aspects of identity through extravagant and/or flamboyant disregard for sexual categories? Why have marginalized sexually groups found greater success in the world of popular music than other cultural arenas? How have performances of lesbian and gay sexuality advanced political change? How has transgender performance challenged oppressive categories of control? These are some examples of questions we hope to see addressed in this issue, but authors exploring any subjects relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer studies and popular music are encouraged to submit essays.

Contributors should submit (by mail or electronically) manuscripts of 20-25 pages in MLA format by May 1, 2005 to: