Dr. Thomas Bell, adjunct professor of Cultural Geography at WKU, has just published an exciting new book titled Sound, Society, and the Geography of Popular Music (Ashgate Publishing).
With co-editor Ola Johansson (Pittsburgh-Johnstown), Dr. Bell has put together a collection of 15 essays on aspects of popular music, written by geographers from around the world.
As a cultural form, popular music is very much rooted in space and place. Dr. Bell’s new book analyzes the meaning of music from a geographer’s perspective and, by doing so, sheds light on changing social relations and trends, including identity, attachment to place, cultural economies, social activism, and politics. Case studies in the edited volume are drawn from the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia, and Great Britain.
Dr. Bell joined the Department of Geography and Geology this past August after a long and distinguished career at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He will be teaching Urban Geography in the upcoming Spring semester and plans are to teach the Geography of Popular Music in the near future.
Contact: Geography & Geology, (270) 745-4555.
