Athens, Ga. – The Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia will host a mini-conference called “Women, Rock and Politics” at Tasty World in downtown Athens on Friday, May 18, from 12 to 6 p.m.
Following a reception period, the conference will open at 12:30 p.m. with the first panel, “Feminist Musicology Explores Courtney Love, Björk and Bette Midler.” For this panel Casey DeHoedt, a musicology graduate student at UGA, will present a paper called “Reasons to Be Beautiful: An Analysis of Courtney Love’s Performance Persona,” followed by Stephanie Allen, a musicology graduate student at UGA, with her paper, “There’s More to Life than This: Women’s Experiences and the Music of Björk.” Matt Jones, a musicology graduate student at UGA, will close the panel with “You’ve Got to Have Friends: Frame Analysis, Persona and the Divine Miss M.”
Lesley Feracho, associate professor of romance languages and African-American studies at UGA, will open the second panel, “The Political Economy of Rock: Race, Gender and Sexuality,” with her paper “Black Women and Rock: The Insider-Outsider Politics of Race and Gender.” Susan Thomas, assistant professor of music and women’s studies, will then present “Re-viewing Gender and Sexuality in Music Video: A 25-Year Retrospective.”
Kay Turner, folk arts director of the Brooklyn Arts Council, adjunct professor of performance studies at New York University and former lead singer for Austin-based band Girls in the Nose, will give the keynote address at 4 p.m., titled “Medusa Bulldozer: Subversive Singing about Lesbian Music circa 1993 [A Keynote in the Key of F(eminist)].” The keynote address will include a rock band performance.
These events are free and open to the public. Tasty World is located at 312 E. Broad Street in downtown Athens. For more information, contact the institute at 706/542-2846.
The Institute for Women’s Studies is a unit of UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences that brings together multidisciplinary perspectives on women and gender from across all schools and colleges at UGA. For more information about the institute, visit www.uga.edu/iws.
