Humanities, University of Southampton

This module looks at the female voice and the female performer in twentieth-century popular music, using both iconic and lesser-known figures as subjects for inquiry and analysis.

Module Co-ordinator: Dr Laurie Stras

The aims of this module are to promote critical thinking about female performers in popular music, and to introduce students to a wide range of historical popular music genres.  Having successfully completed the module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of style and genre in the girl singer repertoire, of the recent history of female vocality in western popular musics, the relevance of significant cultural theories (such as those pertaining to the construction of gender and race) to the repertoire.

This module looks at the female voice and the female performer in twentieth-century popular music, using both iconic and lesser-known figures as subjects for inquiry and analysis.  Topics to be addressed will include "What is a pop singer?", "Where is the singer?", "The girl singer and the body," "Representing sex," "Appropriation and exchange," "Girl groups and girl power", "Technique or technology?", "Gender theories and the girl singer."  A wide range of artists and genres - from Ma Rainey to Lady Gaga, and from parlour song to punk via jazz, blues and rock'n'roll - will be used in class discussion. 

One two-hour lecture per week

The literature on girl singers is not as extensive as you might imagine.  However, there is one book that you should try to read in its entirety.  There are several copies in the Library, and you can pick it up quite cheaply on Amazon:

O'Brien, Lucy. She Bop II. London: Continuum, 2002.

1500 word essay - performance analysis (30%); 2000 word essay - critical analysis (40%); two-hour exam - performance and critical analysis (30%)