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]

Death plays an important role in human life, and there have been many theories about how this inevitability affects human thought, and social life. According to anthropological studies, death and death-related phenomena, including rituals, music, the meaning of death, are based on the originating cultures. This makes depressive suicidal black…[Read more]

Vocal accent in musical performance may carry more information than what is apparent at a first look. This idea becomes more significant in a popular music realm, where globalization is pronounced, thus making the dichotomy of individuality and belonging desires obscured compared to a realm where locality dominates the form of expression. This…[Read more]

After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Hong Kong music in general lingered in the middle of influences from the English heritage, Mainland China, and local traditions. This is observed best in popular music made, and performed in Hong Kong’s local scenes. As a result of globalisation of 1990s and 2000s, Hong Kong’s local popular mus…[Read more]

Death/doom metal music, a style of extreme metal, emerged around the beginning of 1990s with a genius loci in West Yorkshire. While this style dispersed around the globe during this decade and later decades, the pioneers of this style -namely Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Anathema- quickly moved on from the style which they are credited to…[Read more]

After the extreme turn of late 1980s and early 1990s of metal music, three northern England-based bands –My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost from Bradford, and Anathema from Liverpool, commonly referred to as ‘the Peaceville Three’ because of their record label based is Dewsbury, West Yorkshire- went on to pioneer the musical style which came to be…[Read more]

Doom metal music is comprised of richly varied styles. These styles sound significantly different from time to time, yet they still are referred under a doom umbrella. One compelling trait emerges among these seemingly disparate styles. Especially when compared to other heavy and extreme metal music styles, these doom styles always stay on the…[Read more]

Death/doom emerged as a subgenre in extreme metal music during 1990s mostly based in Yorkshire. Interestingly, these Yorkshire-based bands changed their style significantly to what is generally accepted as gothic/doom. This change also illustrates two different approaches to death in the music. While the early repertoire engages with the idea of…[Read more]

Oral history provides important sources of information when looking at the development of a particular genre of music. This idea becomes more pronounced when the genre of music in question may be tentatively considered a popular music. While one has to be careful in labelling a genre of music ‘popular’, in this case labelling extreme metal and mor…[Read more]

This thesis uses ethology as a framework to examine Franz Marc’s paintings of animals. To perceive animals ethologically means acknowledging that animals feel, think, experience, and imagine the world. Ethology has come to include interpretive pursuits as well as traditional field studies, and as I show, Marc’s practice encompassed both asp…[Read more]

Women who stay informed throughout their pregnancy have the opportunity to have the best health outcomes for themselves and their baby. In the UK women use a variety of information systems, and rely heavily on the resources provided by the NHS. With a myriad of sources available to pregnant women, it is important to see how well their chosen…[Read more]

Jacqueline Taucar, in conversation with Thea and Dario Jackson, investigates the sculptural qualities of the Josephine Baker Mas for the Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Festival in 2011. This article traces the conception, construction, and complexities of choreography for this carnivalesque reimagining of Baker in Paris of the twenties for a…[Read more]

This article examines the gender discourses at play in Lee Breuer and Maude Mitchell’s production “Mabou Mines DollHouse,” which re-imagines Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll House” as a literal dollhouse. By casting the male roles with little people (no more than four feet tall) opposite women (who stand at close to six feet tall), Breuer inverts the…[Read more]

The introduction of Disney’s first proprietary tween fashion collection, called D-Signed, marks an unprecedented expansion of synergistic marketing strategies for comprehensive lifestyle branding to the tween girl market in the United States. The production and exponential growth of this particular fashion collection allow girls to literally (at T…[Read more]

The Disney Channel hit show, Hannah Montana, constructs contemporary US girlhood and notions of femininity in relation to celebrity, such that its primary girl characters, Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart, and Lilly Truscott, as well as star Miley Cyrus, are positioned as particularly postfeminist subjects. In such a context, each of these girls can…[Read more]

Sound and space—however one defines these terms—are phenomenologically and ontologically intertwined.

This essay examines some of the curricular and pedagogical practices in place in English departments during the early years of the “Seven Sisters” — the women’s colleges of the late nineteenth century — to address contemporary issues in English studies. The experimental nature of the woman’s college allowed for pedagogical innovation, so that…[Read more]

The Muslim-dominated “Swahili Coast”has always served as a conceptual as well as physical periphery for post-colonial Kenya. This article takes Kenyan youth music under the influence of global hip-hop as an ethnographic entry into the dynamics of identity and citizenship in this region. Kenyan youth music borrows from global hip-hop culture the…[Read more]