Why did human beings first begin to write history? Lisa Irene Hau argues that a driving force among Greek historians was the desire to use the past to teach lessons about the present and for the future. She uncovers the moral messages of the ancient Greek writers of history and the techniques they used to bring them across. Hau also shows how moral didacticism was an integral part of the writin…
Mongrel Nation surveys the history of the United Kingdom's African, Asian, and Caribbean populations from 1948 to the present, working at the juncture of cultural studies, literary criticism, and postcolonial theory. Ashley Dawson argues that during the past fifty years Asian and black intellectuals from Sam Selvon to Zadie Smith have continually challenged the United Kingdom's exclusionary def…
The study of South Asian music falls under the purview of ethnomusicology, whereas that of South Asian literature falls under South Asian studies. As a consequence of this academic separation, scholars rarely take notice of connections between South Asian song and poetry. Modernizing Composition overcomes this disciplinary fragmentation by examining the history of Sinhala-language song and poet…
Situated at the intersection between the history, historiography and aesthetics of twentieth-century music, this study uses Benjamin Britten’s operas to illustrate the ways in which composers, critics and audiences mediated the “great divide” between modernism and mass culture. Reviving mid-century discussions of the “middlebrow,” Chowrimootoo demonstrates how these works allowed audi…
Louder and Faster is a study of taiko in California, focused on the play of sound, performance, identity, ethnicity, race, gender, and politics. Wong explores taiko as a music/dance art form that creates spaces in which memories of the WW2 Japanese American incarceration, Asian American identity, and a desire to be seen/heard intersect with global capitalism, the complications of mediation, and…
Contributors discuss how growing up in a world saturated with digital media affects the development of young people's individual and social identities. As young people today grow up in a world saturated with digital media, how does it affect their sense of self and others? As they define and redefine their identities through engagements with technology, what are the implications for their exper…
How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry…
Player pianos, radio-electric circuits, gramophone records, and optical sound film—these were the cutting-edge acoustic technologies of the early twentieth century, and for many musicians and artists of the time, these devices were also the implements of a musical revolution. Instruments for New Music traces a diffuse network of cultural agents who shared the belief that a truly modern music …
In the 1990s, Los Angeles was home to numerous radical social and environmental eruptions. In the face of several major earthquakes and floods, riots and economic insecurity, police brutality and mass incarceration, some young black Angelenos turned to holy hip hop—a movement merging Christianity and hip hop culture—to “save” themselves and the city. Converting street corners to open-ai…
Scott McLean’s Writing for Success is a text that provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading and critical thinking and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition. Beginning with the sentence and its essential elements, this book addresses each concept with clear, concise and effective examples that are immediately reinforced wit…