USC College Department of English

Alice Echols

Associate Professor of English, Gender Studies and History

Contact Information
E-mail: echols@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-1163
Office: THH 404F

Education

B.A. History, Macalester College, 1/1973
M.A. History, University of Michigan, 1/1980
Ph.D. History, University of Michigan, 1/1986

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

Associate Professor, University of Southern California, 08/15/2004-
Visiting Professor, English Department, Rutgers University, Spring 2007

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests

All of my work--my first book on second-wave American feminism, my biography of Janis Joplin, and perhaps most of all, my latest project on disco--grapples with the relationship between culture and politics. I am best known for my work on the social change movements and the popular music of the 1960s, but my forthcoming book, Upside Down: Disco and the Re-making of American Culture, extends my research into the 1970s, a rich but understudied period of American history. I have always worked and taught in an interdisciplinary fashion, largely because of my interest in gender studies, which dates back to my graduate studies at the University of Michigan. I was trained as a social historian, but over the years my scholarship has moved in the direction of cultural history and cultural studies. My next book, about a Depression-era banking scandal in Colorado Springs, Colorado, blends cultural/social history with memoir.

Research Keywords

Popular Music; Gender and Sexuality; Race and Ethnicity; U.S. History, 1945-1989; History and Theories of Feminism; The Great Depression; Memoir; Biography

Research Specialties

Social and Cultural Histories of Sexuality and Gender; Popular Music (particularly rock, R&B and disco); U.S. History, 1945-89; History and Theories of Feminism; Cultural Studies

Funded Research

USC Funding

Faculty Development Grant. Disco & The Remaking of American Culture: Disco and the Re-making of American Culture situates disco in America’s changing landscape--post-civil rights, post-industrial, increasingly global, and with sexual politics a divisive area. , $2,500, 2007-2008

Affiliations with Research Centers, Labs, and Other Institutions

Columbia University Seminar on Women and Society

Conferences and Other Presentations

Conference Presentations

""The Legacy of Ellen WIllis' Radicalism"", Forging a Radical Political Future, Talk/Oral Presentation, , Cooper --New York City, The Left Forum, Invited, 2007-2008
""Bad Girl: Donna Summer and the Sexual Politics of Disco" ", The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Talk/Oral Presentation, , Minneapolis, MN, Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians, Invited, Spring 2008
""Moving and Knowing: Embodied Knowledge on the Disco Dance Floor" ", Symposium: "How Do We Keep Knowing?", Keynote Lecture, , College Station, Texas , The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Res, Invited, Spring 2008

Publications

Book

Echols, A. (2007). Upside Down: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture to be published by W.W. Norton & Co. New York City: W.W. Norton.
Echols, A. (2002). Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks, published by Columbia University Press. New York: Columbia University Press.
Echols, A. (1999). Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin published by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt. New York City: Henry Holt.
Echols, A. (1989). Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75. Mpls. MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Book Chapter

Echols, A. (2008). "Authenticity and Artifice in Seventies Popular Music". pp. 33-page essay. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Echols, A. (1994). "'Nothing Distant About It:' Women's Liberation and Sixties Radicalism," in David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History, pp. 149-74, University of North Carolina Press, 1994; reprinted in Joan Tronto, Kathy Jones, and Cathy Cohen, eds., Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader, pp. 456-476, New York University Press. pp. pp. 149-174. Chapel Hill, NC: *The Sixties: From Memory to History* University of North Carolina Press.

Book Review

Echols, A. (2008). "Blasts from the Past," A Review of Cathy Wilkerson’s Flying Close to the Sun and Carol McEldowney’s Hanoi Journal 1967, in The Women’s Review of Books. Women's Review of Books--Wellesley College. Women's Review of Books

Essay

Echols, A. (2008). "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes," Forum on Stephen Whitfield’s "How the Fifties Became the Sixties" in *Historically Speaking*. Boston, MA. Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society: Boston University. The Historical Society, Boston University

Journal Article

Echols, A. (2008). "The Land of Somewhere Else: Refiguring James Brown in Seventies Disco," in *Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts*. Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts-- published by Wayne State University. Vol. 50 (#1), pp. 25. Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature & the Arts
Echols, A. (1995). 'We Gotta Get Out of This Place:' Notes Toward a Re-Mapping of the Sixties," in Socialist Review; Reprinted in Marcy Darnovsky, Barbara Epstein, and Richard Flacks, eds., *Cultural Politics and Social Movements,* pp. 110-130, Temple University Press, 1995. Socialist Review--. pp. 9-33.
Echols, A. (1983). Cultural Feminism: Feminist Capitalism and the Anti-Pornography Movement," in Social Text. Social Text, published by Duke University Press. Vol. 7, pp. 34-53. Social Text

Multimedia Scholarship and Creative Works

Radio Interview, Morning Edition," NPR, Extended Interview about my book, Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin, 1999-2000
Radio Interview, Terzo Anello Musica on Radio 3 Ra, Radio Interview on the occasion of the publication of my Janis Joplin biography in Italy, 2005-2006
Documentary Interview Subject, The BBC's Janis Joplin Documentary, "Southern Discomfort", 2002-2003
Documentary Interviewee & consultant: ABC News, "Janis Joplin", 2000-2001
Television: Featured Author--Judith Regan Show, "Janis Joplin" , 1999-2000
Documentary Interview Subject: Biography Channel, "Janis Joplin", 1999-2000

New Courses Developed

Feminist Theories SWMS 560, SWMS, This graduate seminar familiarizes students with the significant currents of debates within feminist theorizing. My version of this class succeeds in really bridging the divide between the social sciences and the humanities. Too often such classes lean heavily in the direction of one or the other. My version, which includes both canonical and cutting edge work in History, Film and Literary Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy and cultural studies, represents a siginifcant revision of previous incarnations of this class., 05/01/2007-
Literature & Related Arts: The 1970s, English Department, "It seemed like nothing happened" is a typical description of the 1970s. "It seemed like nothing good happened" is another. To many pundits, the 1970s remain an era of political quiescence and cultural regression, one encapsulated all too neatly in its polyester, platforms, hot tubs, and disco music. Increasingly, however, scholars have observed that it was during the seventies that the part of the sixties canonized (or demonized) as "The Sixties"--the sexual revolution, feminism, and civil rights--actually had its greatest impact. In English 472 we will explore the distinctiveness of the 1970s, especially as regards the period’s films, literature and music. Were the 70’s an Ice Age, the era of the Big Chill? Were they a time of backlash, malaise or existential despair? How did identity formation develop in this period? And how have nostalgic accounts of the era rendered it?, Fall 2008
Visual and Popular Culture, English, I developed this class in order to address an under-explored area in the English Department curriculum: aural or sound studies. Interdisciplinary and drawing on foundational work in literary criticism, American Studies, cultural studies, Anthropology, and History, this class examines the ways that people use music to create meaning for themselves, and the cultural fall-out that sometimes follows from these musical engagements. Students become acquainted with a range of theoretical writing on popular culture including work that calls into question strongly held beliefs about musical authenticity and widely held ideas about the antagonism between art and commerce, subcultures and mass media., Fall 2005

Honors and Awards

General Education Course Innovation Award, 2006-2007
Gustavus Meyers Outstanding Book Award-Daring to Be Bad, 1990-1991
ACLS Grant-in-Aid Fellowship, 1990
The Horace H. Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award, The University of Michigan, 1987
University Fellowship, The University of Michigan, 1986
Center for Gender Research Fellowship, 1985
Rackham Dissertation Grant, The University of Michigan, 1984

Service to the University

Media, Alumni, and Community Relations

Interview with Chicago Public Radio, Spring 2005
Interviewee and Consultant--BBC Program on Janis Joplin, 2002-2003
Interview on ABC's 20/20 segment on Janis Joplin, Spring 2000
Interview about my book, Scars of Sweet Paradise, on Morning Edition--NPR , Spring 1999