Current Perspectives in Popular Music Studies
Course, Master's level, 5MU078
Expand the information below to show details on how to apply and entry requirements.
Spring 2026
Spring 2026,
Uppsala, 50%, On-campus, English
- Location
- Uppsala
- Pace of study
- 50%
- Teaching form
- On-campus
- Instructional time
- Daytime
- Study period
- 30 March 2026–7 June 2026
- Language of instruction
- English
- Entry requirements
-
A Bachelor's degree, equivalent to a Swedish Kandidatexamen, from an internationally recognised university. Proficiency in English equivalent to the general entry requirements for first-cycle (Bachelor's level) studies.
- Selection
-
Higher education credits (maximum 285 credits)
- Fees
-
If you are not a citizen of a European Union (EU) or European Economic Area (EEA) country, or Switzerland, you are required to pay application and tuition fees.
- First tuition fee instalment: SEK 12,500
- Total tuition fee: SEK 12,500
- Application deadline
- 15 October 2025
- Application code
- UU-02908
Admitted or on the waiting list?
- Registration period
- 9 March 2026–29 March 2026
- Information on registration from the department
About the course
From its beginnings, the study of pop music has been marked by two idiosyncratic characteristics: first, it has been intrinsically interdisciplinary, including a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Second, the field of study has been ever-current, deeply invested in analysing cultural practices as they unfold as well as situating these analyses in their political, economic, and technological contexts. Building on this tradition, this course will introduce some of the central contemporary perspectives in the study of popular music and will be structured around three primary areas of examination:
- Analysis: This theme engages in contemporary approaches towards the analysis of pop music with regard to its particularities as a heavily technologised, mediated, and non-notated musical practice.
- Theory: This theme introduces contemporary interdisciplinary work that has contributed to the theorization of popular music, its performances, aesthetics, and possible meanings from a range of scholarly perspectives including philosophy, gender and critical race studies as well as ecocriticism.
- Current sounds: This theme focuses on recent aesthetic developments in popular music with a focus on its sonic, technological, and multi-media characteristics and maps some of the novel scholarly questions these developments have introduced.