University of Michigan Press Blog

Q&A with Theo Cateforis, author of Are We Not New Wave?

New wave emerged at the turn of the 1980s as a pop music movement cast in the image of punk rock's sneering demeanor, yet rendered more accessible and sophisticated. Artists such as the Cars, Devo, the Talking Heads, and the Human League leapt into the Top 40 with a novel sound that broke with the staid rock clichés of the 1970s and pointed the way to a more modern pop style.

In Are We Not New Wave? Theo Cateforis provides the first musical and cultural history of the new wave movement, charting its rise out of mid-1970s punk to its ubiquitous early 1980s MTV presence and downfall in the mid-1980s. The book also explores the meanings behind the music's distinctive traits—its characteristic whiteness and nervousness; its playful irony, electronic melodies, and crossover experimentations.

Theo Cateforis is Assistant Professor of Music History and Cultures in the Fine Arts Department at Syracuse University.  His research is in the areas of American Music, Popular Music Studies, and Twentieth-Century Art Music. He was editor of the anthology The Rock History Reader.

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UM Press director Phil Pochoda to retire, consult; directorate will take interim lead

After a distinguished career in publishing, University of Michigan Press Director Phil Pochoda will be (technically) retiring September 1.

Over the past decade, Pochoda took the Press from being a publisher concentrated on traditional delivery of books to being an innovator in the field. Virtually every book the Press now produces is available to read or hear in a multitude of ways, from traditional words on paper to a variety of electronic, ebook and audio formats. Over a thousand back and front list titles are now also available electronically for sale, for rent, or for free viewing. The Press continues to break ground in new areas ranging from innovative digital partnerships and products, such as its work with the HathiTrust and its digitalculturebooks program with the University of Michigan Library, to the ways in which it reaches potential readers.

Prior to joining the Press, Pochoda was associate director and editorial director of the University Press of New England; editorial director of Anchor Books and Dial Press at Doubleday; and vice president at Simon & Schuster while publisher and editor in chief of Prentice Hall Press.

But while he is technically leaving the Press, Pochoda will continue to shape those new directions. Over the next year, he will be serving as a consultant to the UM Library and its MPublishing division, of which the Press is a part, helping to set a new course for scholarly publishing during the market’s continuing transition to digital readership. He will also be a fellow at the Humanities Institute during its year of digital humanities.