College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences > Academics > Sociology > Faculty > Deena Weinstein

Deena Weinstein

  • dweinste@depaul.edu
  • Professor, Retired

  • PhD​

  • Sociology
  • 773.325.7824

  • ​

Dr. Deena Weinstein is a Professor of Sociology at DePaul University. She received her doctorate degree from Purdue University. Her specialties include social theory, sociology of rock music, mass media studies, popular culture, and sociology of celebrity. She has published extensively on rock music, including Heavy Metal—the music and its culture, book chapters on the lyrics of Roger Waters, the globalization of metal, Sgt. Peppers album cover, protest songs, British heavy metal, cover songs, and a variety of articles on interaction in rock bands. Weinstein's interest in sociological theory is wide ranging, dominated by work on Georg Simmel's cultural and formal sociologies, including co-authoring the book (Post)-Modernized Simmel. Dr. Weinstein has also ventured beyond academic discourses, writing reviews of albums and concerts, and publishing interviews with rock musicians for a variety of  magazines.

Research Interests

  • Sociology of Celebrity
  • Mass Media
  • Rock Studies
  • Social Theory

Books

Rock’n America: A Social and Cultural History, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada, 2015

Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, New York: DaCapo, 2000.

Postmodern(ized) Simmel, London: Routledge, 1993.

Bureaucratic Opposition: Challenging Abuses at the Workplace, New York: Pergamon Press, 1979 (Republished Bureaucratic Opposition: Challenging Abuses at the Workplace, Merrifield, VA: Elsevier Press, 2013).

Book Chapters (partial List)

The Empowering Masculinity in British Heavy Metal, pp. 17-31 in Gerd Bayer (ed.), Heavy Metal Music in Britain, Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009. Republished by Routledge, 2016.

Brothers in American Music, Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars and Stories That Shaped Our Culture,  Jacqueline Edmondson (ed.), Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2013, pp. 161-164.

Metallica Kills, pp. 149-155 in Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself: Essays on Debut Albums, George Plasketes (ed.), Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

Neil Peart versus Ayn Rand, pp. 273-285 in Rush and Philosophy: Heart and Mind United, Jim Berti and Durrell Bowman (eds.), Chicago: Open Book Press, 2011. 

Pagan Metal, pp. 58-76 in Donna Watson and Andy Bennett  (ed.), Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, Durham: Acumen, 2013. 

The Globalization of Metal, pp. 34-59 in Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World, Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger and Paul D. Greene (eds.), Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2011.

Appreciating Cover Songs: Stereophony, pp.243-251 in George Plasketes (ed.) Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music, Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010.

Roger Waters: Artist of the Absurd, pp.81-93 in Pink Floyd and Philosophy: Careful with that Axiom, Eugene!, George A. Reisch (ed.), Chicago: Open Court, 2007.

Rock Protest Songs – So Many and So Few, pp.3-16 in The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest, Ian Peddie (ed.), Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006. 

Creativity and Band Dynamics, pp. 187-199 in Eric Weisbard (ed.) This is Pop, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Progressive Rock As Text: The Lyrics of Roger Waters, pp.91-109 in Kevin Holm-Hudson (ed.) Progressive Rock Reconsidered, New York: Routledge, 2002. 

Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, New York: DaCapo, 2000.

Art vs. Commerce: Deconstructing a (Useful) Romantic Illusion, pp.56-69 in Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell (eds.), Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth, New York: New York University Press, 1999.

The History of Rock's Pasts through Rock Covers, pp. 137-151 in Thomas Swiss, John Sloop and Andrew Herman (eds.), Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998.

Articles (partial list)

Just So Stories: How Heavy Metal Got Its Name A Cautionary Tale, Rock Music Studies 1, #1 (February 2014); 36-51.

Rock's Guitar Gods – Avatars of the Sixties, Archiv fuer Musikwissenschaft 70, 2 (July 2013): 139-154

​All Singers are Dicks, Popular Music and Society 27, #3 (October 2004): 323-334.

Celebrity Worship as Weak Religion, Word & World 23, #3 (Summer 2003): 294-302. 

On the Visual Constitution of Society: The Contributions of Georg Simmel and Jean Paul Sartre to the Sociology of the Senses, History of European Ideas 5, #4 (Spring 1984): 349‑62.

The Problematic of Marginality in Mexican Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 4, #3 (1981): 21‑25.

Other Publications