Programs with good coverage of 20th cent. popular music

[kitt kat]

I'm currently a graduate student working on an MA in "Arts Journalism" with a focus on music criticism. It's my intention to apply to a PhD program in historical musicology sometime within the next one to three years (depending on how my freelancing ramps up after I graduate in May 2013).

I have a few schools I'd be interested in checking out further, including my current academic institution, but I'm coming up short in schools that would be the best for me given my area of concentration. My MA thesis is looking to be a 10,000 - 20,000 word piece on Southern California punk/hardcore in the 1980s — something I'd like to possible continue in a doctoral program. In any case, I'm academically interested in anything that happened post 1960s in popular music, with an especially strong dedication to American punk movements.

I understand that pop music, especially my particular segment of pop music history, isn't something that's entirely broken out in academia. There's a few people here and there that teach or write on the subject (lots in the UK, it seems) but not a whole lot. I'd like to stay in the US just given my interests.

Wondering if anyone can point me to programs or professors exploring this or similar subjects. One of my current professors is one of the few I know who dabbles in it, but that's about it.

[comp12]

As for historical musicology, 98% of the time I have heard that term, it has been applied to mean music of the Western classical cannon. There are quite a number of popular music scholars today (probably way more than I think you might be assuming, and the amount of punk-specific scholarship out there is also somewhat substantial, especially in relation to cultural and gender studies), but most of the time they are more associated with the ethnomusicology strand, or just simply musicology. There is a society for popular musicology: IASPM. They also keep a list of some grad programs of the field by country and by state: http://www.iaspm.net...ngpopularmusic/ That might be interesting to poke through as a start.

Edited June 6, 2012 by comp12

[Karajan]

I don't know too much about this area of study, so forgive me if this advice is off-base, but I think UCLA and Columbia would be two good places to consider.

[kitt kat]

Yeah, I've looked at both UCLA and Columbia. I'd like to leave California (maybe?) and I am hesitant to think I'd get into Columbia.