Patriotism, race, and gender bending through American song: cover illustrations of popular music from the Civil War to World War I

This dissertation engages America's illustrated sheet music through topical analyses of political and social ruptures from the Civil War to World War I. In so doing, it demonstrates that music illustrations fit into larger networks of American picture making, participating in the recording and redirecting of contemporary American anxieties. Chapter 1: Bloody Banner, Silent Drum: The Material Wounded on Civil War Sheet Music argues that violated flags and drums in music illustrations transcended their martial functionality to signify loss of innocence and life; in so doing, they took on their own subjectivity. Chapter 2: Banjos, Rifles, and Razors: Picturing American Blackness investigates the transition from black-face minstrel songs to the "coon song craze" of the 1880s and 1890s, arguing that the stock character's razor, a weapon frequently figured in the songs, was not only a symbol of violence but of white fears of black social mobility. Chapter 3: Hoopskirts and Handlebars: Gender Construction and Transgression in Victorian America offers two case studies, one of cross-dressing pictures after the Civil War, the other of gendered bicycle images, arguing that the American public between the war and the turn of the century enjoyed contemplating the flexibility of gender roles and boundaries. Chapter 4: "There Were Giants in the Earth": Monsters of the First World War argues that popular pictures of American giants and monstrous war machines engaged in symbolic battle with monstrous Huns, who symbolized German atrocity for a Euro-American public uncomfortable with the idea of war with European peoples. At the same time, giants represented the common belief of America's special role in international peace, as neutrality gave way to declared war. Sheet music illustration was a vibrant part of American visual culture. By assessing the layered meanings of these often ignored pictures, my dissertation seeks to recover and restore lost memories of America's usual but fraught visual romance with popular song

Rock'n'Roll: The Sounds of Rebellion?

The fifties were the scene of a 'virtual revolution' in popular music. Around 1954 rock'n'roll surfaced and took America by surprise; the young were excited and the adults shocked. The paper deals with two questions. First, how could rock'n'roll develop into an autonomous popular music style? This means that the music became more than notes and sounds. Second , how did the signification as being rebellious come about? The answer is that music does not have meaning of its own but acquires meaning through interactions between artists, record producers, media, and audiences. The paper shows how America's postwar transformations shaped the conditions for rock'n'roll's emergence and how it was socially constructed into an autonomous music style which acquired the meaning of rebelliousness

Archival research and film music: the case of the Boston Pops Orchestra

Film music has increasingly populated the concert programs in the last twenty years. Yet, the presentation of the film-music repertoire in concerts is a corner of the film–music field that has received little scholarly attention. Archival research combined with the study of audio–visual documents in particular is the key to reconstruct the story of the presentation of film music in concerts. As a case study, I present the findings of the research that I conducted in Boston, U.S.A., in 2010 and 2011. Its aim was to demonstrate John Williams's seminal contribution to the legitimization of film music as a viable concert repertoire during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra—“America's orchestra”. The results showed very convincingly that John Williams's association with the most trend–setting and visible orchestra in the U.S.A. has been a major force and a seminal influence for the acceptance of film music as a legitimate concert repertoire

The African-American Intellectual of the 1920s: Some Sociological Implications of the Harlem Renaissance

This paper deals with some of the sociological implications of a major cultural high-water point in the African American experience, the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance. The paper concentrates on the cultural transformations brought about through the intellectual activity of political activists, a multi-genre group of artists, cultural brokers, and businesspersons. The driving-wheel thrust of this era was the reclamation and the invigoration of the traditions of the culture with an emphasis on both the, African and the American aspects, which significantly impacted American and international culture then and throughout the 20th century. This study examines the pre-1920s background, the forms of Black activism during the Renaissance, the modern content of the writers\u27 work, and the enthusiasm of whites for the African American art forms of the era. This essay utilizes research from a multi-disciplinary body of sources, which includes sociology, cultural history, creative literature and literary criticism, autobiography, biography, and journalism

ALEA III: Works of Ervin Schulhoff, December 6 1991

This is the concert program of the ALEA III: Works of Ervin Schulhoff performance on Friday, December 6, 1991 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. Works performed were the following by Ervin Schulhoff: Divertissement for Clarinet, Oboe and Bassoon, Second String Quartet, Duo for Violin and Violoncello, and Concerto for Winds and String Quartet. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Junk international: the symbolic drug trade

Spectacular value-adding between third-world production sites and first-world retail marketplaces; the entrapment of indigenous workers in cycles of low-pay dependence and intimidation; ruthless profit maximization; the easy penetration of sovereign economic zones; altered social habits and habitual consumerism in such zones; the flow of untaxable cash from local economies to off-shore finance centers; local franchising as the agency of aggressive, transnational cartels or monopolies - all these characterize globalization. They also describe the processes of the international drug trade, the commerce in 'junk', which William S. Burroughs recognized in The Naked Lunch (1959) as the very model of a colonizing capitalism at its most efficient pitch

Spartan Daily, February 19, 1960

Volume 47, Issue 75https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/3991/thumbnail.jp

Alea III International Composition Competition Concert, September 14, 1991

This is the concert program of the Alea III International Composition Competition Concert on Saturday, September 14, 1991 at 7:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. Works performed were String Quartet No. 1 by Andrew List, L'ombre Du M. Haller by MG Hynes, Rajas by Corrado Vitale, Octette by Yong Yang, Soft Voices in the Memory by David Pickel, Vera Quartet by Michael Lapidakis, Incoronato Poeta by Christophe Looten, memory places by Katharine Norman, Konzertstück II by Michael Goleminov. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

The Cowl - v.16 - n.19 - Apr 28, 1954

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 16, Number 19 - Apr 28, 1954, 1951. 8 pages