Modern academic criticism bursts with what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick once termed paranoid readings—interpretative feats that aim to prove a point, persuade an audience, and subtly denigrate anyone who disagrees. Driven by strategies of negation and suspicion, such rhetoric tends to drown out softer-spoken reparative efforts, which forego forceful argument in favor of ruminations on pleasure, love…
Contingent Encounters offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the musi…
Burgas regularly tops the list of best places to live in Bulgaria. Whether enjoying a walk through the resplendent Sea Garden, relaxing on the beautiful central city beach, or enjoying a drink and fresh grilled fish at one of the many outdoor bars and restaurants, it is easy to see why tourists like it so much. A key challenge for the city, however, is to extend this good feeling to the off-sea…
Trouble Songs is a hybrid serial work that tracks the appearance of the word “trouble” in 20th- and 21st-century American music. It reads (and sings) songs and poems, with reference to cultural events ranging from the death of a pop singer to the growth of popular resistance movements. The trouble singer invokes the word “trouble” in place of actual trouble—the song is a spell that co…
Thoughtrave is the immediate and most detailed archive of Lady Gaga’s emotional, intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual evolution, a reclaiming of her art (and humanity) from within the center of her celebrity during one of the most difficult transitions of her career: Summer 2013–Fall 2014. I don’t like being used to make money. I feel sad when I am overworked and that I just becom…
There is good news and bad news in the renewable energy industry. We have made a lot of progress in green energy over the past few years as technologies have improved and the costs of production have fallen. But we are not doing enough. Fatih Birol, Director of the International Energy Agency, writes that despite progress, renewables still have a long way to go. We need much more action to make…
Our contemporary culture is communicating ever-increasingly through the visual, through film, and through music. This makes it ever more urgent for theologians to explore the resources of art for enriching our understanding and experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Annunciations: Sacred Music for the twenty-First Century, edited by George Corbett, answers this need, evaluating the relati…
In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp—a mode of engagement that relishes both the…
Bologna’s unique political and cultural history helped it forge ahead of most Italian cities with strategic investments in services, health care and education. How well does its focus on sustainability in a range of areas set it up for continued success? This essay provides an overview of the development of the Bologna metropolitan region in recent decades, emphasising the role of urban polic…
Emerging Solutions for Musical arts Education in South Africa offers peer-reviewed articles prepared for the 2003 Conference of the Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education in Africa held in Kisumu, Maseno, Kenya. Not only does this publication voice the solutions offered by 31 authors from the African continent and beyond, but it presents in a unique and highly accessible fashion the col…