Reece Peck

Country Mix

I received a B.A. in Literature from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah (my hometown). 

I’m a fourth year graduate student from Salt Lake City, Utah.  In 2004, I’m proud to say I was part of the first cohort of McNair Scholars in the state of Utah. 

The general field of my research is country music media and my general goal is to conduct a political interpretation of this field.  A less, yet still broad way to describe my project is an analysis of how a culture industry (the country industry) has affected and continues to affect conservative populist discourse and imagery in the United States.  I have isolated four primary themes and bodies of literature that structure the content of my dissertation: the political economic structure of the music industry and the mass media as a whole, the emergence of conservative populism, the southernization and ruralization of class-identity in the United States, specifically, blue-collar and working class identity, and, lastly, the racial politics of the country music artworld with a particular focus on contemporary representations of whiteness.  One last topic that is of interest, is the cultural affinities and differences
between regional-Mexican musical forms like Banda, Tejano, and Narcocorridos, and U.S. country music.

Conferences I have presented at include: Working Class Studies Association Conference at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (June, 2007) and the BINACOM “Encuentro” conference which took place in Mexicali, Mexico (October, 2007).  I was invited to but could not attend the “How Class Works Conference” at the State University of New York.