Tyler Bickford

  • Professor

Tyler's Affiliations: Children's Literature, Global Studies Center

Tyler Bickford teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in children’s literature and childhood studies. He advises graduate students working in those fields, as well as students studying media and technology and using ethnographic methods. Trained as an ethnomusicologist, his research focuses on contemporary children's media, especially popular music and digital technology, using ethnographic and cultural studies methods. He is the author of Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020) and Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children's Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017).

He is the chair of the USW–Union of Pitt Faculty bargaining committee, negotiating a first contract for our union of faculty across ranks and campuses at Pitt.

Representative Publications

Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020) 

Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children's Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017)

“The Kindie Movement: Independent Children’s Music in the United States Since 2000,” in Music in Early Childhood: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives and Inter-disciplinary Exchanges, edited by Beatriz Ilari and Susan Young, pp. 223–33 (Springer, 2019)

“Music of Poetry and Poetry of Song: Expressivity and Grammar in Vocal Performance,” Ethnomusicology 51/3 (2007): 439–76

Research Interests

Children's Literature, Childhood Studies, Popular Culture, New Media, Education, Music and Language, and Ethnographic Methods