Pop Conference 2016

Dwandalyn R. Reece is Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and is curating the music exhibition, Musical Crossroads, which will open in September 2016. Reece has worked on such projects as the 2011 Folklife Festival program, Rhythm & Blues: Tell it Like It Is, and is a member of the SI pan-institutional group, Smithsonian Music. Before joining... Read More →

David Gilbert teaches African American and U.S. history at Mars Hill University, just outside of Asheville, NC. He has recently published his first book, The Product of Our Souls: Ragtime, Race, and the Birth of the Manhattan Musical Marketplace, through UNC Press, and is currently researching the racialization of Appalachian music, dance, and culture. “The Myriad Voices of a Sideman: Marc Ribot’s Guitars and Aesthetic... Read More →

Charles L. Hughes is Director of the Memphis Center at Rhodes College. He is the author of Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). He has spoken and published widely in race and popular music in the U.S. He is also a musician and songwriter. “‘I Don’t Want No R-E-S-P-E-C-T’: The Disruptive Black Southernness of Brittany Howard” | In October 2015... Read More →

Tyina Steptoe is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Arizona. Her research examines race, gender, and culture in the 20th century U.S. She is the author of Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City, which was published by the University of California Press in 2015. “Mexi-Cajun Blues: Accordions and Multilingual Voices in the Western South” | Mingo Saldivar sits comfortably in his tour... Read More →