Franz Waxman composed over 150 film scores, the most famous of which is Billy Wilder’s film noir Sunset Boulevard (1950). The film plot bears a striking resemblance to Rod Serling’s teleplay for The Twilight Zone, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (1959). Waxman, composer of the film, was approached to compose a score for a television episode…[Read more]

The promulgation of pollution control regulations governing factory farms has led to a striking new way of representing and intervening in the bodies of farmed animals: the body is being represented as a source of pollution, and various technological interventions, from genetic engineering to dietary changes, are being deployed to reduce pollution…[Read more]

This article examines Farm Sanctuary’s failed effort to save the Enviropigs. In the Spring of 2012, after losing the main source of funding for its Enviropig project, the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, killed the last sixteen members of this line of transgenic pigs, despite Farm Sanctuary’s offer to place them in permanent homes. The…[Read more]

An examination of taxonomic bias in the field of animal studies.

Roadkill is disgusting. Many people just want it removed from the roads as quickly as possible, and they don’t care where it goes. In Pennsylvania, most of the deer carcasses that are collected from the roads end up in landfills. But is this a respectful way to treat the dead? And what about the vultures and other scavengers who would otherwise e…[Read more]

This PowerPoint accompanies Ramala: An American “Indianist” Opera Musicological Lecture Concert (http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M67K1J).

Ohio State University Opera & Lyric Theatre presents “Ramala”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6HEzeWw9SI Wednesday, November 1, 2017 – 7:30pm Weigel Auditorium Charles Wakefield Cadman, Francis La Flesche, and Nelle Richmond Eberhart began collaborating on this opera in 1908, at that time titled Daoma (sometimes spelled Da O Ma). In the 1930s,…[Read more]

‘Watch the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves’; so says the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But can we be so sure of this? The Duchess, like her creator Lewis Carroll, often seems to put more emphasis on the sound of words than their sense, a technique that can also be detected in other written texts and in works of so…[Read more]

An audio taster of my book The Sound of Nonsense. The taster includes samples of recordings of the work of some of the novelists, poets, musicians and performers who are used as case studies in the book. The taster is designed to both provide an overview of the subject matter of the book and to model one of the types of sonic nonsense discussed in…[Read more]

These are examples to go with http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M64Z69. The handwritten examples existed only in hardcopy, so rather than simply scanning them, I redid them. Aside from a couple of clearly marked changes, they are the same as the 1981 versions.

This is an updated version of the 1981 paper. The first part, published in Theory and Practice, is substantially unchanged save for some details of the analysis and several added comments. The second part, written over the past year, is an appendix that addresses the role of memory in Ives’s music. There is an additional analysis of his song “The…[Read more]

Editorial Article to the special issue “Mise en geste. Studies of Gesture in Cinema” (ed. by Ana Hedberg Olenina and Irina Schulzki) in journal “Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe” 5 (2017). 1. Gesture as a Figure of Speech. About this Issue 2. Liberated Gestures: Theories of Bodily Statements beyond the…[Read more]

Review of the book “The Vesuvian Eruption of 1631: an Early Modern History” (by Alfonso Tortora)

By the end of the sixteenth century, many Jesuit colleges had become centers of excellence all over Europe for such disciplines as mathematics, astronomy, hydraulics, and mechanics. Not a few members of the order provided influential contributions to science: in the case of the study of waters, the inquisitive eye of Jesuits took part in the l…[Read more]

Since its first attempts to understand natural phenomena, early modern science devoted great attention to the problematic issue of the origin of springs. This essay examines the lively debate that emerged from the studies on fresh water during the years spanning from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. By focusing on the…[Read more]

In 1687, after he graduated in Medicine, young Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730) returned in the Duchy of Modena and Reggio. In those years he mainly served as general practitioner; nevertheless, he also devoted many studies to various aspects of the natural sciences. He performed many observations, accurately reporting them in seven “Quaderni”…[Read more]

In 1587 the Flemish composer Carolus Luython, employed by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, published an unusual motet collection in Prague. Titled Popularis anni jubilus, the collection describes the sounds and rituals beloved by Central European peasants, recasting them as the ecstatic songs of rustic laborers (jubilus) famously celebrated by Saint…[Read more]

Since the 1950s, Brigadoon has been accepted as a representation of Scotland. Brigadoon’s Scotland consists of a highland landscape with lochs, mists, castles populated by fair maidens, warlike yet sensitive kilted men and bagpipers. Much of this comes from the invented traditions of Scotland, particularly kilts and clan tartans; late n…[Read more]