Hope University in Liverpool has announced a new line of study focused on their famed musical hometown heroes. The one-year, full-time graduate course will be called “The Beatles, Popular Music and Society.” While pop music and culture are rapidly increasing as fields of scholarship in universities around the world, this will be the first masters program centered on the Fab Four.
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The announcement has naturally gained a good deal of attention, especially among enthusiasts in the United States. The Liverpudlian university stresses, however, that this will be a rigorous and disciplined investigation of the beloved band. Dr. Mike Brocken, leader of Hope’s popular music studies, is interested in examining the group’s effect on 20th century cultural history. “The Beatles influenced so much of society,” said Brocken. “There have been over 8,000 books about the Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address. Forty years on from their breakup, now is the right time and Liverpool is the right place to study the Beatles.””
Brocken and his colleagues hope that they can enlist the aid of guest lecturers who knew or worked with the band. “The Beatles, Popular Music, and Society” will begin this September.
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