Visual Rhetorics And Multimodal Writing (ENGL 2V) Syllabus

Visual Rhetorics and Multimodal Writing is a course in rhetoric (the art of persuasion) that focuses on arguments made via digital media. In this course students read, watch, listen and respond to maps, video essays, podcasts, newspaper and magazine articles. They also have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience producing their own persuasive pieces, by creating maps, gathering video interviews, collaborating to produce video essays, learning basic animation skills, and producing podcasts

Mimesis stories: composing new nature music for the shakuhachi

Nature is a widespread theme in much new music for the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). This article explores the significance of such music within the contemporary shakuhachi scene, as the instrument travels internationally and so becomes rooted in landscapes outside Japan, taking on the voices of new creatures and natural phenomena. The article tells the stories of five compositions and one arrangement by non-Japanese composers, first to credit composers’ varied and personal responses to this common concern and, second, to discern broad, culturally syncretic traditions of nature mimesis and other, more abstract, ideas about the naturalness of sounds and creative processes (which I call musical naturalism). Setting these personal stories and longer histories side by side reveals that composition creates composers (as much as the other way around). Thus it hints at much broader terrain: the refashioning of human nature at the confluence between cosmopolitan cultural circulations and contemporary encounters with the more-than-human world

Debussy's string quartet in the Brussels salon of "La Libre Esthetique"

The second performance of Debussy's String Quartet, given by the Ysaye Quartet on an all-Debussy program during the 1894 salon of "La Libre Esthétique" in Brussels, offers an ideal context for a critical reexamination of his musical and aesthetic affinities at this pivotal moment. In the first place, a view to the salon's other three concerts, which honored Beethoven alongside recent works by Societe Nationale composers, encourages reconsideration of Debussy's own response to the "great tradition" in the work he ironically designated "Opus 10." But at the same time, due regard to his other contemporaneous compositional obsessions, as exemplified in the works programmed alongside the Quartet, raises the question as to how such self-conscious dialogue with Classical models related to more pressing, post-Wagnerian musical negotiations. Pursuit of this question through analysis of the first movement's reconfigured sonata form ultimately suggests ways to distinguish, from amid the myriad post-Impressionist artists on view in the "Free Aesthetic" salon itself, those painters whose visual explorations most tellingly paralleled Debussy's own "games" with musical syntax and expression in the early 1890s

Sonic autoethnographies: personal listening as compositional context

This article discusses a range of self-reflexive tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, and explores examples of sonic practices and works in which the personal listening experiences of the composer are a key contextual and compositional element. As broad areas for discussion, particular attention is given to soundscape composition as self-narrative (exploring the representation of the recordist in soundscape works) and to producing the hyperreal and the liminal (considering spatial characteristics of contemporary auditory experience and their consequences for sonic practice). The discussion then focuses on the specific application of autoethnographic research methods to the practice and the understanding of soundscape composition. Compositional strategies employed in two recent pieces by the author are considered in detail. The aim of this discussion is to link autoethnography to specific ideas about sound and listening, and to some tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, while also providing context for the discussion of the author’s own practice and works. In drawing together this range of ideas, methods and work, sonic autoethnography is aligned with an emerging discourse around reflexive, embodied sound work

Music education

The chapter explores the historical development of music education in Scottish secondary schools and summarises current and future trends in pedagogy and assessment. The chapter offers a critical overview of current provision for the non-specialist and identifies contemporary debates around musical genre, technology and instrumental teaching provision

Boston University Symphony Orchestra, March 3, 2005

This is the concert program of the Boston University Symphony Orchestra performance on Thursday, March 3, 2005 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. Works performed were "L'Ascension" by Olivier Messiaen and Symphony No. 7 in E major by Anton Bruckner. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Center for the Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Boston University Symphony Orchestra, February 12, 2013

This is the concert program of the Boston University Symphony Orchestra performance on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Works performed were Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 Jupiter by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, and Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

What is the impact of blogging used with self-monitoring strategies for adolescents who struggle with writing?

Plan B Paper. 2012. Master of Science in Education- Reading--University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Teacher Education Department. 28 leaves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 25-26).Writing is an onerous task for those who struggle with the skill. The basic prerequisites of organizing thoughts, transcribing thoughts into words, and writing down those words is fundamental to the more advanced skills of developing a sense of audience, writing with voice and applying conventions. Without proficient skills, students who cannot write, do not write. Positive attitude toward the process of writing suffers. Time spent on actual writing is limited. As a consequence, writing skill does not develop. Students who struggle with writing can be supported in their skill development through self-monitoring strategies. Self-monitoring strategies for writing give students a systematic process to know how to approach a writing task. The clear step-by-step process breaks down difficult skills and allows students to build proficiency through guided practice and eventually, independence. This action research project explored the impact of using self-monitoring strategies with the 21st century skill of blogging within a Writer's Workshop instructional model. Sixteen students (eleven males, five females) in grades 6-8th participated in a twelve week study. Target writing skills of fluency, stamina, motivation, awareness of audience and participation in peer review were measured for changes over the course of the study. Students were instructed in the use of self-monitoring strategies focusing on increasing word counts in correct word sequence timings, on-command prompt passages, and formal writing process pieces. Blogging was introduced and used to apply target skills to a digital writing setting. Each student learned self monitoring strategies to compose posts in personal blogs and to read and comment on other students' blogs. Pre-and post-writing attitude survey, correct word sequence timings and writing samples were taken throughout the study to assess each students' skill level and attitude toward writing. The group showed average gains of 34% in correct word sequence and 66% in word counts of process writing pieces. Qualitative data and quantitative data demonstrate that writing skills and attitudes toward writing also showed positive development when self-monitoring strategies were used to support the writing tasks of blogging in a Writer's Workshop model

Practice led research into stream-form composition methods, freeassociation, and synaesthesia in audio/visual compostion.

.haul / S is a portfolio of audio/visual works, all with a common start point, synaesthesia: a powerful and highly personal phenomenon. In this portfolio I examine my own synaesthetic perceptions of sound and image, and how they direct my compositional decisions and aesthetic tastes. These perceptions, and the resulting compositions, are compared to the experiences of synaesthete composers, and their goals in composing from such an abstract source material, as well as synaesthetes not engaged in musical endeavours. In doing so, I speculate how the act of making from such personal, abstract, and ultimately indescribable and unsharable experiences affects an audience’s reception of the pieces produced. As such, I produce works that are as close to being about nothing as I could posit: pieces that feature no defined subject, theme, or narrative, outside of their constituent parts. This nothingness, or lack of concrete reference is speculative, aiming to open discussion on perception and synaesthesia (which I do not consider a special condition only experienced by few), and strives to inform further work actively influenced by this composer/audience feedback loop. The compositions in this portfolio are also the result of practice-led research into stream form composition methods, and examinations of free-association in audio/visual composition. The aim of this research is to open discussion on intuitive composition practices, and composers’ aesthetic judgments and decisions when producing a work. It also examines synaesthesia as a compositional tool, as a means of suggesting further research in a field which is still poorly understood