While popular music has indulged male power, it has exploited female desire. Its performances of controversial identities smash social norms, but also help to create new ones. Its lyrics encourage freedom and rebellion while business interests cash in on its hope. Female artists are the biggest selling in the world, yet the realm of popular music undermines their power by manufacturing and focusing on feuds between them. From Cynthia Plaster Caster to Rihanna, this talk examines the ways in which women navigate the pleasures and dangers of popular music.
BIO
Rebecca Sheehan is a lecturer in US History at the University of Sydney United States Studies Centre. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California in 2010 and has worked in music and related industries in Sydney, Singapore and New York. Rebecca has published on rock music of the 1970s, on boxing in Australia and the Philippines, and is working on her first book entitled Rise of the Superwoman: How Sex Remade Gender in America’s Long 1970s. She loves teaching her undergraduate subject ‘Sex, Race and Rock in the USA’ and you can hear her talk about this and more every Monday morning in a weekly music history segment on FBi community radio.
