FIMS Profile

Dr. Norma Coates
Associate Professor

FIMS & Nursing Building Room 4061
Phone: 519-661-2111 x80154

University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7
Fax: 519-661-3506
ncoates@uwo.ca
  • Teaching

  • Research

  • Publications

  • Courses Taught

  • Theses Supervised

Teaching
I am jointly appointed to the Faculty of Media and Information Studies and the Department of Music History in the Don Wright Faculty of Music. In FIMS, I teach in the undergraduate program in Media, Information and Technoculture and the Graduate Program in Media Studies. My MIT classes explore popular music and its intersections with subjectivity and with the products of other culture industries. My classes for the DWFOM explore the cultural history of genres and performers as well as the historical and current music industry. I am closely involved with launching and implementing Western’s new interdisciplinary M.A. in Popular Music and Culture.

Research
My research interests span several areas, all of them unified by a link to popular music. I have published several articles about how gender is constructed by and in the material practices of popular music cultures. I am currently at work on a book for Duke University Press about popular music on American network television from 1956, when Elvis Presley burst on the cultural scene, to 1981, when the cable channel was introduced. The book is a cultural and industrial history that focuses on the interaction and interchange between the music and television industries during formative times in the development of both. I am interested in the influence each had on the other in terms of production, content, and representation. My future projects, currently in the formative stages, include a cultural history of periodic outbursts of "years of the women" in popular music and criticism, and an exploration of age, subjectivity, and popular music.

Representative Publications:

"Teenyboppers, Groupies, and Other Grotesques: Girls and Women and Rock Culture in the 1960s and early 1970s," Journal of Popular Music Studies, volume 15, number 1, 2003.

"The Demonization of Courtney Love," in 'Bad' Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America, eds. Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky, NYU Press, 1998.

"'Can't We Just Talk About Music?': Rock and Gender on the Internet," in Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory, ed. Thomas Swiss, John Sloop and Andrew Herman, Blackwell Publishers, 1997.

"(R)evolution Now? Rock and the Political Potential of Gender,” in Sexing The Groove: Popular Music and Gender, ed. Sheila Whiteley, Routledge, 1997.

"If Anything, Blame Woodstock: The Rolling Stones, Altamont, 6 December 1969," in Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time, ed. Ian Inglis, Ashgate Publishing, 2006.

Rocking the Wasteland: A Cultural History of Popular Music on American Network Television from Elvis to MTV (tentative title), Duke University Press, forthcoming.


FIMS 9607 Special Topic: Critical Listening 2020 Fall MIT 1050 Navigating our Media Landscape: #mediaculture 2022 Winter , 2021 Winter , 2020 Winter , 2019 Winter , 2018 Winter , 2017 Fall , 2016 Fall , 2015 Fall MIT 250 Watching Music on the Small Screen Popular Music on Television 2008 Winter , 2006 Fall , 2006 Winter , 2005 Fall MIT 3353 Popular Music and Identity 2014 Fall , 2013 Fall , 2012 Fall , 2010 Fall , 2009 Fall , 2009 Winter MIT 372 Exile in Guyville?: Popular Music and Gender 2007 Fall MIT 4030 Television Music: Histories, Theories, Mythologies 2011 Winter MIT 4033 Special Topics in MIT: Popular Music and Identity 2018 Fall MIT 4037 Special Topics in MIT: Critical Listening 2021 Fall MS 722 Popular Music and Identity 2007 Winter MS 9320 Race, Culture, Music 2010 Winter PMC 701 Introduction to Popular Music Studies 2007 Fall PMC 9702 Listening to Popular Music 2019 Winter , 2017 Fall , 2013 Winter , 2010 Fall

Robinson Smith, Emmett. "I Need to Fight the Power, But I Need that New Ferrari": Conspicuous Consumption, New-School Hip-hop and "the New Rock & Roll"
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, August 2019
Supervisors: Keir Keightley and Norma Coates
Wilton, Lydia Claire. The Elements of Production: Myth, Gender, and the "Fundamental Task" of Producing Popular Music
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, August 2019
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Lipson, Matthew. 'Calling Out From Some Old Familiar Shrine': Living Archivism and Age Performativity in Bob Dylan's Late Period
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, April 2019
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Canosa, Sandra. Girls, Rock Your Boys: Female Tribute Acts and the Reclamation of Rock
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, August 2016
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Keron, Catherine. Establishing Female Resistance as Tradition in Country Music: Towards a More Refined Discouse
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, August 2016
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Davila, Richard. No Hay Sólo Un Idioma, No Hay Sólo Una Voz: A Revisionist History Of Chicana/os and Latina/os in Punk
Phd in Media Studies, March 2016
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Hamel, Danielle. The Halifax Pop Explosion: Music Scenes, Sloan, And The Case For A Halifax Sound
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, December 2013
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Mcleish, Claire. "The Future is Medieval": Orality and Musical Borrowing in the Middle Ages and Online Remix Culture
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, April 2013
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Francis, Meghan Ruth. "I'm your biggest fan (I'll follow you until you love me)": social networking sites, fans, and affect
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, April 2011
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Coverdale, Kara-Lis. Sound, rhetoric, and the fallacy of fidelity in recorded popular music: toward a critical approach to timbral analysis
Master of Arts in Popular Music & Culture, April 2010
Supervisor: Norma Coates