News for 33 1/3

This year we wanted to try something new with 33 1/3, and we’re excited to finally be able to announce our plans for the series.

We’re changing up the proposal decision-making process a bit and handing the reins over to a few incredibly qualified and talented individuals bringing with them impressive backgrounds in academia and music/culture writing. This is a way for us to gain some fresh perspective for the series, and to keep the series growing and changing in interesting directions.

That being said, we’re very pleased to introduce the new 33 1/3 series editors:

Kevin Dettmar is W. M. Keck Professor & Chair of English at Pomona College and author of the 33 1/3 volume on Gang of Four’s Entertainment! He is the past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and author of Is Rock Dead? (Routledge). He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, and co-editor of Reading Rock & Roll: Authenticity, Appropriation, Aesthetics (Columbia UP) and the forthcoming Library of America anthology Rock & Pop Writing (with Jonathan Lethem).

Amanda Petrusich is the author of three books about music, including the 33 1/3 volume on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and, most recently, Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records (Scribner), which was named one of the best books of 2014 by NPR, Slate, and BuzzFeed. Her music and culture writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Oxford American, Pitchfork, Spin, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony, and presently teaches music journalism at New York University.

Gayle Wald is Professor of English and American Studies at George Washington University. She is the author of It’s Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television (Duke UP), a cultural history of the musically groundbreaking public TV show. Shout, Sister, Shout! (Beacon), her biography of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, was the basis for the PBS/BBC documentary Godmother of Rock and is currently being reimagined as a musical. A recipient of NEH and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, she is currently co-editor of Journal of Popular Music Studies.

Daphne Brooks is Professor of African American Studies, Theater Studies, and American Studies at Yale University. She is the author of the 33 1/3 volume on Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke UP). Her writing has also appeared in The Nation, The Guardian/Observer, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. She has served multiple times on the Experience Music Project Museum’s annual pop music conference planning committee and is currently a member of the advisory council for Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York City.

What does this mean for the proposal submission process? This year rather than doing an open call, we will be accepting proposals on a rolling basis. They can be sent to this new e-mail address: 333submissions@gmail.com. Submission guidelines are generally the same otherwise, but please review our slightly updated How to submit a proposal page.

We’re really looking forward to this next step for 33 1/3, and welcome Kevin, Amanda, Gayle, and Daphne to the 33 1/3 editorial team!