IHC Road Scholars Speakers Bureau
Kevin J.H. Dettmar
Southern Illinois University
Department of English
Mailcode 4503
Carbondale, IL 62901-2888
P: 618.453.6817
Kevin J.H. Dettmar
Kevin J.H. Dettmar holds a PhD in English from UCLA and teaches 20th Century British, Irish, and American literature, and post-WWII popular music at SIU-Carbondale. Among his many publications, Kevin is the author of Is Rock Dead (Routledge, 2005) and is currently editing the Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan (2008). He has won several NEH awards for research and writing and will direct an NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers in 2007. Kevin has lectured widely on contemporary popular music and is a frequent contributor to public radio,newspapers, and is a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education.Flashpoints in Twentieth-Century American Popular Music
Rock & roll history is full of "flashpoints," very public moments when the competing claims of rock come to the surface. When Jimi Hendrix plays the "Star Spangled Banner" on his Stratocaster at Woodstock, for example, the passive "hippie" ambience of the festival is shredded by the amplified sounds of the far-off Vietnam War. This presentation focuses on a handful of such flashpoints - Elvis on TV, Madonna's first video, "Like a Virgin", and Kanye West's attempt to reconcile rap's desire for 'bling-bling" with a social/political conscience, in "Diamonds" - to illustrate how popular music has always registered the larger concerns of the republic.Return to the archive listing for IHC Road Scholars Speakers Bureau
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