Nadine Hubbs's Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music has been called "one of the most important scholarly discourses on country music of this decade" (Wondering Sound) and "a major reconceptualization of the history and politics of sexuality" (David Halperin). But the book's "implications ... go far beyond the social and sexual politics of a popular music form" (Times Literary Supplement).Presenting a timely, unstinting, music-fueled argument on the politics of working-class culture and existence, Rednecks is "an important book that is ... as much about moral questions as it is about political, social, and cultural concerns" (Popular Music and Society).
In Hubbs’s view, the popular phrase “I’ll listen to anything but country” allows middle-class Americans to declare inclusive “omnivore” musical tastes with one crucial exclusion: country, a music linked to low-status whites. Hubbs dissects this gesture, examining how provincial white working people have emerged since the 1970s as the face of American bigotry, particularly homophobia, with country music their audible emblem. Bringing together the redneck and the queer, Hubbs challenges the conventional wisdom and historical amnesia that frame white working folk as a perpetual bigot class.
Discussants:
Nadine Hubbs (Women's Studies, Music, American Culture)
Charles Garrett (Musicology)
Karyn Lacy (Afroamerican & African Studies, Sociology)
Gayle Rubin (Anthropology, Women's Studies)
Gender: New Works, New Questions draws attention to new works that engage gender and sexuality, and are produced by U-M faculty members.
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