Scholars, students, teachers, and fans are invited to “So Many Roads: The World in the Grateful Dead,” a conference to be held at San Jose State University, San Jose, California, November 5–8, 2014.

The conference will explore the Grateful Dead phenomenon both intrinsically and in all of its broader contexts, from the band’s genesis in the cultural ferment of the Bay Area in the 1960s to their mainstream success thirty years later. The scholarship on the Grateful Dead represents 26 different disciplines and fields, and the conference welcomes all disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, including:

Archival Theory and Practice, Art History, Business Theory and History, Communication Studies, Comparative Literature, Creative Nonfiction, Critical Theory, Education, Ethnomusicology, Ecological Studies, Economics, Fiction, Folklore, History, Interdisciplinary Theory, Geography, Journalism, Library and Information Science, Literary Studies, Museum Studies, Musicology, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Rhetoric, Sociology, Statistics, Theology

Papers addressing all aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon are welcome. Music, lyrics, performance, recording, and audience will be explored, and broader comparative and contextual treatments are encouraged. In particular, papers on the band’s role in the 1960s and in the counterculture are welcome, as are analyses of their contributions to the development of popular music as an industry. In keeping with the theme of the conference, international perspectives are especially encouraged, as are approaches that use the band and the phenomenon it inspired as lenses for explicating a wide range of theoretical issues.

The deadline for registration is September 15, 2014. Participants who wish to present should send an email with an abstract (150 to 500 words) and brief bio (50-150 words), as a Microsoft Word attachment, to: Dead-conference@sjsu.edu

Participants may submit a single paper or propose an entire panel (three papers).

Details will be posted at the conference web site shortly.

We look forward to welcoming you to San Jose in November!