In this 1500–2000-word paper (excluding endnotes and references), you will document analyze a genre through a sociological lens.
The audience for this paper is readers who frequent media outlets like The New Yorker, The New Criterion, Commentary, The Paris Review, and Pitchfork.
Think of the paper in three sections (the second of which will be considerably longer):
1. To contextualize your analysis for these readers, begin by providing a scholarly view of music genre from a sociological standpoint. What features of genres attract the attention of writers like Lena, Hesmondhalgh, Molanphy, Hepokoski & Darcy, Holt, Chandler, Negus, Roy & Dowd and others?
2. Consider a genre or sub-genre through this lens. An author or journalist must have already identified this genre in print (read: in a book published by an academic press, an academic journal, or major print magazine), and you may not choose a major genre like pop, rock, country, rap, hip-hop, jazz, R&B, classical, or EDM—this creates too big a topic to describe in 2000 words. Also, you may not choose “country rap”—I’ve just read too many of these in recent years. Sorry! You may, however, choose “subgenres” of these genres, or regional variations of major genres. In this analysis, you might consider the questions below. Please address the last one explicitly.
• How is the genre organized?
• How does it relate to industry?
• How does it define authenticity?
• How does it define itself in opposition to other genres?
• Most significantly, how are these values and organizational schemes reflected in the sound of the music?
3. Conclude by considering the genre’s plausible future through the frame work of the genre lifecycle described in Lena & Peterson (2008). Where is the genre in this cycle? Might it become a traditionalist genre?
In grading this paper consider the following:
Is the research cited throughout engaged responsibly? For me, this means (1) that most of the course literature from the unit is cited, (2) that your description of it is accurate, (3) that the contribution of the author is what is cited, not general facts, and (4) that the relevance of the citation for your own argument is evident.
Does your discussion of the sub-genre seem accurate? Does it engage the issues you raised in the first section?
Is your conclusion persuasive?
Is the prose clean? Have you respected the word limit (both the upper and lower boundary)?
