EMP’s Pop Conference will again be in Seattle in 2013 (and NY, LA, Cleveland and New Orleans)

The EMP Pop Conference has long been one of my favorite events to attend, though I hadn’t been able to make it to the gatherings in Los Angeles or New York in the last two years. The promise from the EMP was that the conference would return to Seattle in 2013, and that’s true, sort of. It was announced last week that it will take place at five separate locations across the US on one weekend. The press release says:

After our blowout meeting in New York last spring, this year’s Pop Conference will be a truly all-American enterprise. Five different gatherings, in the East, West, South, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest, will take place on the same weekend, with a goal of livestreaming the content for those unable to travel and preserving it for posterity. At each location, there will be one panel at a given time, rather than concurrent sessions, to foster regional community.

Local organizers, all veteran conference participants, will steer the program for each Pop Conference city: Oliver Wang of Cal-State Long Beach in Los Angeles (working with the USC Dornsife Center for Feminist Research, directed by Karen Tongson); Tavia Nyong’o of NYU in New York (working with the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music); Joel Dinerstein of Tulane in New Orleans (working with the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South); Lauren Onkey of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland; and Jasen Emmons of EMP Museum in Seattle.

I suppose it can be a cool use of twenty-first century synergy, but I look forward to meeting the writers and/or academics when they come to town for the conference. The promise is, again, that it’ll be back in Seattle 100% in 2014, from April 10-14. At least there’s another excuse to post this:

{Photo from the EMP’s Flickr page.}

Chris (960 Posts)

Chris Burlingame is the editor of Another Rainy Saturday.