Essays on Music, Adolescence, and Identity: The Adolescentia Project

Essays on Music, Adolescence, and Identity: The Adolescentia Project explores music consumption, self-discovery, media culture, and memory through autoethnographic essays on albums we loved during adolescence covering three decades (1980-2010) as the music industry and socio-cultural identity landscapes in the United States significantly changed. The collectionadvances our understanding of music culture, identity, and adolescence in three ways. First, by expanding our knowledge of the shifting relationship between music and identity by using historical methods to examine changes in music culture and socio-cultural landscapes from 1980 to 2010. Second, by interrogating the role of musical memory and the act of cultural remembering by including autoethnographic reflective essays charting contributors’ experiences of understanding and performing self through a particularly formative album of their adolescence. And third, by critiquing the act of music consumption in relation to identity construction and cultural remembering. By examining these influential albums, we can better understand the role of popular culture in identity construction and the long-term impact of these formative musical experiences.

Dr. Mary Beth Ray is an Associate Professor and Chair of Communication & Media Studies and Co-Chair of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Plymouth State University who writes about internet culture, gender, and popular music. She holds a Ph.D. from Temple University’s Mass Media and Communication Program and an M.A. in Media Studies from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communication. Dr. Ray is a long-time co-chair for the Popular Culture Association’s Internet Culture Area, as well as co-chair of the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association’s Music Area. Her first book Digital Connectivity and Music Culture - Artists & Accomplices (2017), was published by Palgrave MacMillan.