American popular music is a powerful and visible aspect of pop culture: one of our most prominent forms of cultural expression. Join Southern Oregon University's Dr. Vicki Purslow on a journey from 1959 to the present as we track historical and cultural events to the development of popular music and consider how music has played a part in significant moments in our own lives, similarly to the way in which Questlove chronicles the past 50 years of popular music in the JCLS Rogue Reads book Music is History.

Dr. Purslow is a Professor of Music at SOU and previously served as an Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, with more than 30 years of teaching and administrative experience at the university, community college, high school, and middle school levels. Her research interests include access to the arts for children in rural communities and community music organizations for youths. Purslow is distinctive for her research on guitarist Joseph “Smilin’ Joe” Bruhl and Youth of America on Stage.