Eric Weisbard
Professor
- (205) 348-5940
- eweisbard@ua.edu
- ten Hoor Hall 106-D
Education
- B.A., Princeton University
- M.A., University of California, Berkeley
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
About
Faculty Research
- 20th-century America
- Popular music
- Consumer culture
- Popular culture
Selected Publications
Authored Books
- Hound Dog. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023.
- Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.
- Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Winner, 2016 IASPM-US Woody Guthrie Prize for best book on popular music
- Use Your Illusion I and II. New York: Continuum Press, 2007.
Edited Books
- Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
- Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
- This is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Book Chapters
- “Format, the Literature of American Popular Music, and Mr. Crump.” In Music Radio: Building Communities, Mediating Genres, Morten Michelsen and Mads Krogh, eds. Bloomsbury, 2018.
- “Country Radio: The Dialectic of Format and Genre,” in The Oxford Handbook Of Country Music, ed. Travis Stimeling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
- “Love, Lore, Celebrity, and Dead Babies: Dolly Parton’s ‘Down From Dover.’” The Rose and the Briar: Love and Liberty in the American Ballad, edited by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, 287-304. New York: Norton, 2004.
Articles
- “Old Books for New Ceremonies: CliffsNotes to the Literature of American Popular Music,” Journal of Popular Music Studies, 30:1-2 (July, 2018).
- “Musical Beauty and Top 40 Democracy: A Moderated Conversation,” with Barry Shank, Diane Pecknold, Journal of Popular Music Studies 29:1 (March 2017).
- “Rock and Roll,” entry for The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, August, 2016.
- “How Do You Solve a Problem Like a Mainstream? Charting the Musical Middle,” American Quarterly, 67:1 (March 2015), 253-265.
- “Why Do We Keep Having the Same Debates About Pop Songs,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 24, 2014.
- “Beyond Category? Never! The Game of Genres in Popular Music,” Journal of Popular Music Studies, 25:3 (September 2013), 401-405