Pop Conference 2018

Critical Karaoke, Sex and the Singles Girl
Presenter order for this presentation will be random.
It couldn’t be more simple: I am proposing a Critical Karaoke “roundtable” titled "Sex and the Singles Girl.” The participants, to be chosen as the conference approaches and in consultation with the program committee (as this generally draws from those already presenting), will each present on one pop single that takes up the questions of sex and/or gender, with a particular interest in femme/queer experience. My hope is that these presentations can go beyond the polarities of empowerment and disrespect that have characterized the majority of accounts of gender in pop, with the goal of understanding the ways that sex and gender relations are constitutive of the category of the pop single; the implicit historical argument is that the pop single couldn’t exist without the uneven sex and gender dynamics that we might wish to overcome. But that is just sort of my initial hypothesis, not something to which all presenters would be held. I hope also that a breadth of genres can be included. I think 8 panelists is a good number. I myself may well simply help organize, to leave more room for many critics and scholars who have made sex and gender an ongoing priority in their work. The end.
Moderator: Joshua Clover