This article assesses the longstanding myths and debates surrounding the supposed African ancestry of German Romantic composer Ludwig van Beethoven. It argues that the “blackwashing” of Beethoven against all historical likelihood is a failed attempt at historical revisionism—while endeavoring to claim Beethoven’s genius as a testament to black…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

The Stage 3 revision sets up the Theory Palette with hues and tones of green (author, history, and nature), yellow (culture), purple (psyche), grey (text), red (reader), dark blue (literature), light blue (language), rose (embodiment/perception), and hot pink (intersectional feminisms).

Airbrush and pencil tools suggest color blending without…[Read more]

This Theory Palette revision layers in 12 theoretical approaches; it also problematizes the perceiving-subject through a stylized human palette. The thought and speech bubbles gesture toward the problems of apperception and expression after René Magritte’s “Le fils de l’homme” (The Son of Man 1928-29) and “La Trahison des Images” (The Treachery…[Read more]

A clean copy of the Theory Palette http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6581T, this (almost) blank canvas is open to artistic and textual interventions, variations, and compositions with the intersecting concerns of author, history, culture, psyche, text, reader, literature, language, and embodiment/perception as blendable paint colors.

Evoking the creative messiness of an artist’s palette, this Theory Palette depicts nine theoretical concerns as intersecting, blendable paint colors: author, history, culture, psyche, text, reader, literature, language, and embodiment/perception. Just as painters in the same school, theorists blend colors to create their own compositions, s…[Read more]

Desde el período del Dadá se han ido borrando los límites entre las formas artísticas y sus soportes, entre las estéticas de uso y las estéticas formales, entre los espacios altos y bajos de producción cultural, y también, entre la percepción de centros y periferias que parecen haberse astillado y reproducido a la interioridad de espacios hasta ha…[Read more]

An essay on autobiography in pop songs by women: http://www.theavidlistener.com/2014/12/singing-about-yourself-autobiography-in-pop-music.html

An essay on gender and music in the Star Wars films: http://www.theavidlistener.com/2015/01/hearing-gender-in-george-lucass-galaxy.html

Essay on music inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. http://www.theavidlistener.com/2015/10/heavy-metal-elves.html

Very short essay on the way Deleuze uses images in his book on Bacon. In the original French edition, the images are in a separate volume; he does that in order to mime, or enact, the theory of sensation in his text. It seems to me this is an unusual and promising strategy for art history (disposing images so their sequence and arrangement…[Read more]

Presents an analysis of the emergence of new genres of international–especially expatriate–fiction in 21st-century US letters.

An introductory survey of climate fiction (a.k.a. “cli-fi”) in English. Written with an international readership in mind.

This is a paper in comparative phonology, which undertakes a detailed comparative analysis of the standard British English RP (Received Pronunciation) vowel system, and that of standard French, including some observations on regional varieties.

Shakespeare is a local force to be reckoned with in the global marketplace and in digital and analog archives of collective memory. With the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth in 2014 and quatercentenary in 2016, there are several high-profile instances of global Shakespeare being tapped for its market value. The exchange value of…[Read more]

Research on global Shakespeare has focused on the ways in which the plays have been adapted for indigenous languages and customs. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which non-British directors have treated the Elizabethan drama. Yet there are a number of works that create direct musical dialogues between Elizabethan drama, history, and…[Read more]

Nigerian authors have consistently and effectively critiqued insidious connections between
masculinity, political power, religious fundamentalism, and capitalist interests. The unstable
political structures in Nigeria since the 1970s have led to such critiques. This essay deploys the
idea of polygamy in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the S…[Read more]