Thursday, July 2, 2009

A Michael Jackson Bibliography

I'm by no means an expert on Michael Jackson, but I thought I might take a stab at assembling a short bibliography of Michael Jackson studies. As with the blog compendium (blogiography?), suggestions are enthusiastically welcomed. Obviously there is a ton of writing on Jackson by journalists and fans. In my own work on pop music, I find such writings invaluable. But since they are easy enough to find, I won't include them here unless it is a real touchstone of the literature, e.g. Margo Jefferson's book. I'm also not including the standard pop music histories that might (should!) include useful stuff as well; the following list is comprised of academic works primarily devoted to Michael Jackson ETA: Now updated thanks to the help of commenter Ruyi

  • Michael Ackward. "'A Slave to the Rhythm': Essential(ist) Transmutations; Or, The Curious Case of Michael Jackson." Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender and the Politics of Positionality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 175-92.
  • Michael Eric Dyson. "Michael Jackson's Postmodern Spirituality." Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 35-63.
  • Cynthia Fuchs, "Michael Jackson's Penis," in Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality, ed. Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)
  • Marjorie Garber, "Fetish Envy" in October 54 (1990): 45-56.
  • Alisha Gaines, "I Can't Stop Loving You: Michael Jackson and Queer Cultural Desire." in American Sexuality Magazine (2006) [link]
  • Nelson George, The Michael Jackson Story (New York: Dell, 1984)
  • Greg Graham-Smith, "Habeas corpus: Bodies of evidence and performed litigiousness: the spectacle of Michael Jackson's trial," in Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research Vol.34, no. 2 (2008): 278-289
  • Stephen Hinerman, "(Don't) Leave Me Alone: Tabloid Narrative and the Michael Jackson Child Abuse Scandal." in Media Scandals: Morality and Desire in the Popular Cultural Marketplace, ed. James Lull and Stephen Hinerman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
  • Margo Jefferson, On Michael Jackson (New York: Pantheon, 2006).
  • Victoria Johnson. "The Politics of Morphing: Michael Jackson as Science Fiction Border Text." The Velvet Light Trap 32.7 (Fall 1993): 58-65.
  • Kobena Mercer, "Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'" in Screen Vol. 27, no.1 (1986): 26-43.
  • Seth Clark Silberman, "Presenting Michael Jackson" in Social Semiotics Vol. 17, no. 4 (2007): 417-440. [Silberman was an organizer of the 2004 Yale conference on Jackson.]
  • Michele Wallace. "Michael Jackson, black modernisms, and the 'ecstasy of communication.'" Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory. London & New York: Verso, 1990. 77-90.
  • David Yuan. "The Celebrity Freak: Michael Jackson's 'Grotesque Glory.'" Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 368-384.

Hmm, that was kind of less than I thought it would be. Help me out! I did see, however, lots of ongoing work on Michael Jackson out there, especially by graduate students. Hopefully some of that work will see the light of day soon.