Essays on Music, Adolescence, and Identity

Dr. Mary Beth Ray is an Associate Professor and Chair of Communication & Media Studies and Co-Chair of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Plymouth State University who writes about internet culture, gender, and popular music. She holds a Ph.D. from Temple University's Mass Media and Communication Program and an M.A. in Media Studies from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communication. Dr. Ray is a long-time co-chair for the Popular Culture Association's Internet Culture Area, as well as co-chair of the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association's Music Area. Her first book Digital Connectivity and Music Culture - Artists & Accomplices (2017), was published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Chapter 1: Introduction - The Adolescentia Project.- Chapter 2: Part I - The 1980s.- Chapter 3: Something I can say, something I can do: I've come for my Emotional Rescue.- Chapter 4: "What's it like to be a fucked-up teenager?": Violent Femmes, A Primal Scream for Generation X.-  Chapter 5: Cultivating a Rebel Without a Pause.- Chapter 6: Part II - The 1990s.- Chapter 7: "A Long Way from Boston": Loving and Listening to New Kids on the Block as a Jamaican Adolescent.- Chapter 8: The Magic of "Blacks' Magic".- Chapter 9: Prude Pirates and other Contradictory Bodies: Gender, Ideology, and Identity in Adolescence.- Chapter 10: "Destroy the mind, destroy the body, but you cannot destroy the heart": Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and the reclamation of a teenage fat body during the "Age of Fatphobia".- Chapter 11: Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire: An Autoethnography of Music and Political Socialization in Early Adolescence.- Chapter 12: "What am I supposed to do?" Cher's "Believe" and the Siren Call of a Gay Icon.- Chapter 13: Part III - The 2000s.- Chapter 14:  Everything Will Change: Revisiting The Postal Service's Give Up.- Chapter 15: OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below: Musical Theatre, Performance, and Style.- Chapter 16: (Nonbinary Panic!) at the Disco: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out.- Chapter 17: "I'm All Out of Love": Nostalgic Music through the Lens of a Queer Asian Immigrant.- Chapter 18: Raising my voice: Japanese visual kei and musical (self-)discovery.- Chapter 19: The Little Trans Monster: Gender Actualization and Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster.- Chapter 20: Conclusion: Looking Back and Moving Forward - The Courage to Become Who We Are.