Mike SpencerSpencer portrait

Areas of Interest

  • Popular Music Studies
  • Ethnomusicology
  • 20th Cent. American Radicalism
  • African American Studies

Biography

Mike Spencer is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Michigan State University. Originally from San Jose, CA, Mike received his B.A. in History from UCLA and M.A. in American Studies from University of Massachusetts, Boston. His major fields of interests are in ethnomusicology and cultural studies, including popular music and social movements. More specifically, he is interested in the genres of jazz and heavy metal; the intersections of music, technology, and culture; music as/and radicalism; subculture and the politics of representation; and areas of “new musicology.” Since coming to MSU he has presented papers on these and other subjects at the British Association of American Studies Annual Conference at University of Edinburgh, Scotland and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music- US & Canada Chapters Conference in Boston, Massachusetts and has published in Popular Music & Society. His dissertation involves issues of race, authenticity and modernism in West Coast jazz after WWII and is being overseen by his committee: David Stowe (chair), Mike Largey, Steve Rachman, and Scott Michaelsen. He currently teaches a course on music and radicalism in the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department and is Vice- President/ Social Chair of the American Studies Graduate Student Association (ASGSA) at MSU.