On popular music: Teaching modernist cultural studies

This essay argues for the significance of thinking about the continuity between modernism and Cultural Studies in understanding how students respond to the key themes and approaches of Cultural Studies. It takes the experience of using the work of Theodor Adorno to introduce students to what Cultural Studies has to say about popular music as a central example to discuss the ongoing relevance of modernist debates to the field of popular music studies, and the discourses on popular music with which students are familiar when they come to Cultural Studies analysis of popular music. Finally, it argues that thinking about Cultural Studies as a continuation of modernism into the present gives students better critical and historical contexts not only for what is done under the name of Cultural Studies but why it matters.