The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center at UNLV is excited to announce our 2026–2027 lecture series. This season, we are joined by four well-known scholars and musical practitioners from around the United States. They will share with us their research on heavy metal, pop music, video game scoring, and Afro-Cuban folklore’s influence on popular genres. They come to us from multiple disciplines: music theory, English, (ludo)musicology, and jazz performance.

All lectures are free and open to the public, in Alta Ham Fine Arts Building (HFA), room 147. They are free and open to the public.

Our first event is on October 15, 2022. We will be joined by Stephen S. Hudson, Assistant Professor at Occidental College, who will give a talk titled “Metallica Never Sold Out: Style, Progression, and the Politics of Genre.” Our subsequent events will be held on October 27, February 11, and April 14. Visit https://asc.unlv.edu/lecture-series/ for further details.