In July 2013, the recently elected Pope Francis chose Lampedusa for his fist pastoral visit. A tiny island, part of the Sicilian region yet closer to Tunisia than to Italy, Lampedusa has at times become hyper-visible in the media and national discourses surrounding immigration while at other times it is ignored — part of Italy’s geographic and soc…[Read more]

In studies of immigration, generation is typically considered a static categorical system. I argue, however, that generation is a fluid construct and must be understood as place-based. Drawing on fieldwork conducted among Latino/as along the Texas–Mexico border, I seek to explore what current framings of generation leave out. Many in Laredo, T…[Read more]

In The Burns Antiphoner – From manuscript to interactive resource, Anna Kijas reports on a new project based around a 14th-century source, the Burns Antiphoner. In this project they focus on integrating and delivering images, metadata, and recorded audio and video to provide an in-depth look at the contents and experience of this particular s…[Read more]

Review of American Road Narratives: Reimagining Mobility in Literature and Film by Ann Brigham (University of Virginia Press, 2015)

In the documentary, Comic Book City, Portland, Oregon USA, I construct a representation of the city as a place for comics creation. In this paper, I distill key insights from my interviews with writers, artists, and publishers regarding the decision to live and work in Portland. My documentary research suggests that creators are attracted by…[Read more]

In 1984 I published a chapter on the art song, simply entitled “Song,” in my first book, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (University of California Press). The chapter aimed to replace the traditional understanding of song as a harmonious fusion of words and music. The chapter has had a fortunate reception, but as time has run…[Read more]

A short article reflecting on the relationship of Schubert’s songs to the culture of modernity, with reference to the author’s 1985 article “The Schubert Lied.” Includes an account of the song “Wanderers Nachtled.”

Two Pietàs in different media, the first by French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) and the second by Swedish composer Lisa Streich (1985-), permit an examination of the Pietà trope itself by laying open a range of its symbolic aspects. Bouguereau’s Pietà (1876) is discussed in terms of the grief and joy that are both presen…[Read more]

In April 2010, the Guildhall School of Music recognized German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s expertise in extended instrumental techniques, inviting him to give the keynote speech at a research day dedicated to contemporary performance practice; in May, he had a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music conferred upon him for his achievements as a…[Read more]

In a Bangkok mall a fibreglass policeman warning against intellectual property (IP) piracy stands just metres away from vendors selling fake DVDs; a scene indicative of incomplete and unsuccessful attempts by foreign governments (the US and EU in particular) and corporate actors at enrolment towards ever-higher IP standards – the ‘IP rat…[Read more]

Borderland Cities in New India explores contemporary urban life in two cities in India’s Northeast borderland at a time of dramatic change. Social and economic transformation from India’s embrace of neoliberalism and globalisation, often referred to as ‘new’ India, has become a popular subject for academic analysis in the last decade. This is epit…[Read more]

In this chapter we explore the pedagogical effects of collective movement on bicycles grounded in our direct experiences, personal reflections, group discussions and the notes we took during a trans-European, self-organized educational activity called Cycling Alternatives in 2013 and 2014. We thereby engage with non-representational and…[Read more]

This article investigates the confluence of personal interests and official policy on collective farms in the mid-1930s, a period that has received far less scholarly attention than the collectivization drive. The current historiography on collective farmers’ relationship with the state is one-sided, presenting peasants either as passive victims o…[Read more]

Recent opera repertoire has seen a wide variety of styles in opera composition. Marco Polo represents a rather unique corner of this wide variety. Tan Dun explores a capacious array of influences in this work. Starting from his own roots, Chinese traditional music, he explores European art tradition to some extent. Tan Dun also touches the styles…[Read more]

Death doom metal or death/doom emerges as a distinct style in early 1990s mostly focused in northern England. This style or, tentatively, sub-genre of doom may be argued to be a leisure space for participants in this culture. Dark leisure theory attempts to describe non-mainstream leisure activity, and even though it started in criminological and…[Read more]

In the post-modern era, the domination of repetition in aesthetics allows for deeper meaning to be conveyed with limited musical material. The repetition, within Sigmund Freud’s interpretation in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), becomes a ‘repetition-compulsion’ that resonates beyond the aural recurrences. Obsession inherent in depre…[Read more]

Doom (metal) has been seen as the ‘slower’ -in more than one sense- sibling in metal music in general. The slowness can be argued to be true for some cases within doom and this slowness, prominently in musical terms but alongside other angles, can be the defining factor of a portion of doom music. For example, while funeral doom may be argued to…[Read more]

Doom metal music and culture have been under the influence of 1970s hippie ideologies from the beginning with the music of Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi in an interview from 2011 suggests that Black Sabbath has been using the label ‘doom’ since its early days. While during early stages of doom music, this influence or interaction took both tra…[Read more]

Melancholy, death, and the darker thought spectrum should not be considered separate from black metal at any point through its history. In contrast however, depressive suicidal black metal (DSBM) took these themes further in terms of their crudity, and more importantly it fixated on the ideas of death and suicide. The birth pangs of this style are…[Read more]