Dr. Ajitpaul Mangat, assistant professor of English at Niagara University, published an article in Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal. "Politicizing the Biographical Jukebox Musical: 'Elvis' and the Recording Artist as Worker" considers how Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic "Elvis" reinvents the biographical jukebox musical by telling the story of Elvis Presley through the perspective of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, countering the tendency of these films to indulge the viewers' feelings of nostalgia for an idealized past and instead, challenging them to interrogate the ethics of their own consumption and fandom.

According to Dr. Mangat, while biographical jukebox musicals typically represent the struggles and eventual triumph of an individual artistic genius, "Elvis" represents the social process by which artistic labor comes to be commodified. A suggestion made by Colonel Parker toward the end of the film-that what killed Elvis was not "me" or "the pills" or "his heart" but rather his "love for you" -forces viewers ("you") to position their fandom, or "love," in relation to the commodification of labor, he argues.

Dr. Mangat became interested in doing research on the film after discovering it told Elvis' story from the Colonel's perspective, subverting audience expectations.

"Where the criticism I read often criticized or failed to mention this interesting narrative choice, I believed that it allowed for a more political kind of biographical jukebox musical, as it shifted the focus to the recording artist as worker and therefore the economics of musical labor," he said. "I was struck by how the film represented Elvis as being exploited by the Colonel, who worked him like a mule. My initial instinct was that such a depiction allowed for a critique of work under capitalism. It was this instinct that spurred my interest, leading me to first write a short conference paper and then a full, scholarly article."

Dr. Mangat, who first presented this research at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music's annual conference in 2023, notes that his article contributes to the existing work that has been published on the recording artist as worker by highlighting how musicians negotiate the limits of freedom and autonomy in creative cultural-industrial work

"I am excited that I continue this important work through an analysis of a jukebox musical, which has been neglected by critics," he said. "The journal issue that my article appears in focuses on this genre and therefore begins the work of taking this genre more seriously."

Dr. Mangat earned his B.A. at the University of Manitoba, his M.A. at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, and his Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo. His research and teaching focus on the intersection of disability and race in contemporary American literature and art. Dr. Mangat is currently at work on his first book, entitled "Forms of Affiliation: Disability Life Writing and the Socialization of Care," which considers how disability life writing imagines the socialization of care through the formalization of networked affiliations that counter the neoliberal privatization of care within the enclosure of the family. He is also currently co-editing (with Christina Fogarasi) a special issue of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies that will offer a critical reassessment of David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder's foundational concept of "narrative prosthesis" after 25 years. His scholarship appears or is forthcoming in the edited collections Explorations of Consciousness in Contemporary Fiction, Neurodiversity on Television and Care and Disability, as well as the Journal of Popular Music Studies.

Published by University of Nebraska Press, Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, presents a broad view of American music, one that encompasses the diverse soundscapes within the United States as well as the wider Americas, including the Caribbean. Formerly known as the AMRC Journal, Americas continues to further the mission of the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, but in a refocused and revitalized way that reflects the research interests of 21^st century scholars.