American Popular Culture Group Gains New Partners

The American Popular Culture seminar programme, which has been hosted at London Met since 2005, has moved to a new venue at the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA). Seminars will take place at the Institute’s premises in the School of Advanced Study in Senate House at the University of London. The American Popular Culture Research Group seminar programme will be the first to be held at the ISA. The group will continue to be managed by a steering committee within LondonMet but the move will raise the profile of the group outside the university and is a key step towards developing it into a larger academic network by opening up membership to scholars at other universities. The group has also established a social networking site, membership of which is open to all with an interest in any aspect of US popular culture.

The opening session of the series was entitled ‘All you Jim Crow Fascists: Woodie Guthrie’s Freedom songs’. The seminar was led by Will Kaufman (pictured right) whose unique combination of scholarship and performance explores Woody Guthrie’s anti-racist songs and activism. Conventionally known for his championing of the poor white Dust Bowl migrants, Guthrie also left an extensive body of songs condemning Jim Crow segregation, race hatred and racial fascism. These songs are the legacy of Guthrie’s own personal transformation from a casual Oklahoma racist to a committed civil rights activist working with the likes of Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and Paul Robeson in the 1940s and 50s. This often harrowing but ultimately uplifting legacy is reflected in such songs as ‘The Blinding of Isaac Woodward’, ‘The Killing of the Ferguson Brothers’, ‘Harriet Tubman’ and ‘All You Fascists Bound to Lose’.

Mike Chopra-Gant—who convenes the group—is currently course leader for the MA in Mass Communications—and will take on the leadership of the new MSc in Media Studies from September 2010.