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I have received details and starting date for the proposed MA course at Hope University in Liverpool from Professor Mike Brocken the man with the responsibility for organising this ground breaking event.
The MA begins in October.Here is a run down of the modules.
>The first module introduces methods and approaches of how we go about studying popular music and is linked to a specific text that is recommended to students (Longhurst, Popular Music Society)-this module then focuses down several Beatle- related issues that can be covered by some of Longhurst text -issues like covering and authenticity, locality, the music industry post war era, subcultures etc. Assessment will be via an annotated biblio a presentation,and an essay.

>The second module will discuss Liverpool pre and then post wwii eras and how various social and musical issues fed into the early Merseybeat & Beatles profiles. It will discuss the politics of place and focus on venues in and around Merseyside, genres, class and suburbia,-assessment will be similar to module 1.

>The third module looks at the studio sound and compositions of the Beatles and will bring in popular music semiotics. There will be an opportunity in this module to present a case study of one song and this will be linked to a performance if the student so wishes, otherwise assessment via a presentation and written work will be acceptable. There is no need to be a music reader for this module because popular music semiotics allow us to study a musical text in a different way, Different guest lecturers will be available for all three modules.

>The final module is one dealing with social anthropology and ethnography of the Beatles and gives the student the opportunity to get out there and interview people- a presentation and report will be the assignment. They might like to study some local musicians or media or even the local industry that has now set up to capitalise on the group.

>Finally there will be a dissertation of 12,000 words on the subject negotiated with the tutor team. Each module lasts 12 weeks.Full time one would attend two evenings per week and cover all four modules in one academic year; part time once per week for two years.In both cases the dissertation is due towards the end of August .

Geoff: This is an exciting course. Thanks for including the details. I suspect you must be enrolled already.

Yes Peter, I agree it appears to be an exciting course, I hope the organizers are successful in there endeavors.and that they recruit sufficient students.
Mike Brocken has indicated that he will keep me posted on the progress of recruitment.Also they may want me in as a guest lecturer.

... and to think that most of the older generation predicted that they wouldn't last a year ...

Too true, too true, Kira. And I remember my Mom making such disparaging remarks, only to hear her 45 years later saying "I always liked the Beatles." Yeah, ....right, Mom...whatever you say."

JimK

NAh, my Mom held her ground until Liverpool Oratorio. But then even she found something to like about Paul. Kudos to him for winning her over before she died. No other pop star could have done it, and you can take that to the bank.

Twelve full time students signed up in 2009 for The Beatles,Popular Music and Society course organised by Mike Brocken at Liverpool Hope University. The Guardian Newspaper head-lined 'Canadian woman is world's first Beatles graduate'.
Finally, there is a Beatles fan with a degree to prove it. Fifty-three-year-old Mary-Lu-Zahalan-Kennedy has become the first graduate of Liverpool Hope University's MA in Beatles. Besides her recent achievement, Zahalan-Kennedy won a Juno award in 1983 for Canada's most promising female vocalist. She released three albums and teaches at Ontario's Sheridan College.

My niece took a Beatles course at UCLA

She loved it, naturally.

A woman from Ontario, who teaches music at Sheridan College in Oakville, has become the worid's first graduate from this program with an MA degree in the Beatles. There was an article about this in today's paper.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/artic ... -is-grades


Sheridan College professor gets master’s in Fab Four
Oakville's Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy became the first person in the world to graduate with a masters degree in The Beatles Wednesday.
BEATLES Oakville's Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy became the first person in the world to graduate with a masters degree in The Beatles Wednesday.

ALAN EDWARDS/LIVERPOOL HOPE UNIVERSITY/AP

It’s been a bit of a Long And Winding Road, but Oakville’s Mary-Lu Zahalan is the first person in the world to earn a master’s degree in The Beatles.

The 53-year-old vocal performance professor at Sheridan College received her degree Wednesday at Liverpool Hope University in the city that gave birth to the Fab Four.

“It’s been a pretty wild day,” she said.

“It’s kind of nice to be the first in the world at anything, but even more so to be the first in the world to graduate with this inaugural degree.”

Zahalan was just finishing supper in Blakes Restaurant at the Hard Days Night Hotel when tracked down by the Star a few hours after her convocation in the gritty seaside port.

She’s staying in the Lennon Suite, which has a white baby grand piano, large photographs of Beatle John and a huge patio overlooking Liverpool.

Zahalan first learned about the Liverpool program in the Star in early 2009.

“There was a really tiny little article about the program that was to be launched in the fall of 2009, a study of the Beatles with a focus on popular music and society,” she explained.

It was, she said, her “Oh, Wow!” moment.

A lifelong Beatles fan, she said she was drawn by the serious academic approach to a pop phenomenon. Getting people to take her seriously was another matter.

“A lot of people assume it’s just a Beatles fan ‘bird’ course,” she said. “It’s nothing of the sort.”

She said she thinks they made the first course “even more challenging academically than it needed to be just so they could soothe the naysayers.

“It was a cultural and historical analysis, really an examination of all aspects of life, how the Beatles, with their different backgrounds, came together and how they worked incredibly hard to be as good as they were.”

The title of Zahalan’s dissertation is a mouthful: A post-colonial cultural capital? Capitol Canada’s involvement in the early dissemination and marketing of The Beatles.

“We have so many British roots that we were preprogrammed to accept the Beatles and it focused on how they were received in Canada about a year earlier than in the U.S.,” she said.

Zahalan credited Toronto broadcaster Ray Sonin with introducing the moptops to North America when he first played their hit ‘Love Me Do’ on his Calling All Britons radio show in 1962.

A requirement of the program was that she had to live in Liverpool. So Zahalan left her family and job behind in Oakville and moved to England from September 2009 to May of last year.

“It really helped me understand the economic depression of Liverpool at the time,” she said. “Liverpool went from a million occupants in the Fifties to about 450,000. There was an incredible postwar impact on teenagers and technology and what people did for fun.

“There were many unrelated events that created an environment that brought these four guys together.”

Apart from teaching at Sheridan, Zahalan has released three CDs of her own music and was runner-up in the 1976 Miss Canada pageant. She received a Juno nomination as most promising female vocalist in Canada in 1983 and said she hopes to re-release her first CD on a British label later this year.

Thank you for including Mary-Lu Zahalan impressive achievement in more detail. There is a link to the man who originally devised this course at the Hope University in Liverpool MIKE BROCKEN on the Liverpool Project of the Rickresource Forum posted by Peter (Hamilton Square) Joe Flannery!

Yes Geoff, I remember Mike Brocken coming in for a bit-of-stick back in the spring of 2009 when he had to answer to the British media about the validity of Liverpool Hope University mounting a 4 x 12 weeks master degree course on the cultural impact of the Beatles.

See this online Guardian article from March 2009.

He even had to go on BBC Radio to defend the course ... Listen Hear

However, while having nothing what-so-ever to do with the Beatles, I doubt if not many know that Mike Brocken nearly ended up in New Orleans’s infamous Superdome during the aftermath of Hurricane Katarina … Read Here