6,687 research outputs found
UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024
The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp
Designs of Blackness
Across more than two centuries Afro-America has created a huge and dazzling variety of literary self-expression. Designs of Blackness provides less a narrative literary history than, precisely, a series of mappingsâeach literary-critical and comparative while at the same time offering cultural and historical context. This carefully re-edited version of the 1998 publication opens with an estimation of earliest African American voice in the names of Phillis Wheatley and her contemporaries. It then takes up the huge span of autobiography from Frederick Douglass through to Maya Angelou. "Harlem on My Mind," which follows, sets out the literary contours of Americaâs premier black city. Womanism, Alice Walkerâs presiding term, is given full due in an analysis of fiction from Harriet E. Wilson to Toni Morrison. Richard Wright is approached not as some regulation "realist" but as a more inward, at times near-surreal, author. Decadology has its risks but the 1940s has rarely been approached as a unique era of war and peace and especially in African American texts. Beat Generation work usually adheres to Ginsberg and Kerouac, but black Beat writing invites its own chapter in the names of Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans and Bob Kaufman. The 1960s has long become a mythic change-decade, and in few greater respects than as a black theatre both of the stage and politics. In Leon Forrest African America had a figure of the postmodern turn: his work is explored in its own right and for how it takes its place in the context of other reflexive black fiction. "African American Fictions of Passing" unpacks the whole deceptive trope of "race" in writing from Williams Wells Brown through to Charles Johnson. The two newly added chapters pursue African American literary achievement into the Obama-Trump century, fiction from Octavia Butler to Darryl Pinkney, poetry from Rita Dove to Kevin Young
The Perception of K-12 Instrumental Directors in Low-Income Areas on Virtual Learning with Skill Development and Retention
Due to the extreme measures taken to protect students from COVID-19 during the pandemic, schools closed their doors, and educators struggled to continue teaching through virtual learning platforms. Performance-based classrooms were encouraged to discover new methods and strategies to motivate students to thrive even though face-to-face rehearsals were restricted. This study examined the experiences secondary music education instrumentalists faced while attempting to utilize synchronous and asynchronous instruction in a 100 percent virtual performance-based environment. This study aimed to understand the negative and positive effects placed on secondary instrumentalistsâ performance abilities, fundamental development, and participation/retention since the introduction of virtual learning in low-income areas. The focus of this study also examined the possible benefits of enhancing pedagogical skills through the addition of technological advances to push instrumental instruction and performances on the secondary level. This study followed a qualitative hermeneutic phenomenology design. Music educators in low-income DeKalb County communities were interviewed for this study. Participants were requested to share their perspectives and experiences of performance-based virtual learning and results. The study raised the need for future discussions to create and implement a state and national virtual music education guideline that would assist music educators in turning a devastating situation into a blessing for all art programs and their stakeholders
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Student Citizens: Whiteness, Inequality, and Social Reproduction in Marketized Music Education
Music education policy and administration attempts to shape the musical sensibilities of young people. Yet the logics of music education from a socioeconomic standpoint are inadequately understood. This dissertation focuses on the relationship between music education nonprofits and public schools and on the public and private policies that have shaped the formation and perpetuation of these relationships. I analyze the logics of policy documents alongside the discourses and narratives of private organizations that support music education within the specific contexts of New Jersey, a state that mandates music education access for all students, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated societal inequalities, to illuminate how policy makers and administrators shape student experiences in the proto-democratic space of the classroom.
I use policy analysis and institutional ethnography, approaching data primarily through the lenses of neoliberal critiques of marketization, critical whiteness studies, and analyses of the intersection of class and race, which I outline in chapter one. I also consider the design of music education programs within the theoretical framework of culturally relevant pedagogy. Education systems are adapting to shifting racial discourses as schools continue to construct citizens within racialized and classed hierarchies. Music historically has been invoked in the construction of societal stratifications to mark ethnic and cultural boundaries.
In chapter two, I examine these narratives that have shaped the formation of music education in the United States as a culturally hegemonizing force and persist in debates around the purpose of music education in under-resourced schools that mainly serve students from minoritized communities. Music education remains a site at which policy makers, administrators, educators, and community members negotiate the role of culture in shaping new citizens. State music education policy in New Jersey specifically struggles to support the progressive vision it professes as it continues to suggest a strongly hegemonic curriculum and perpetually underfunds music programs in schools.
Within this context, the third chapter considers how funders and advocacy groups are so frequently focused on short-term funding needs that they persistently struggle to address systemic issues in music education, such as issues with administrations that do not represent the communities being served, colonial content and pedagogy, and unsustainable funding solutions. As such, the limited services and non-democratic leadership of privately funded music education programs in public schools reinforce the role of public schools as gate-keepers of exclusionary citizenship norms. At the same time, privatization has also opened opportunities for non-normative, anti-oppressive forms of music pedagogy to enter public schools. In the fourth chapter, I investigate how, though their very existence reinforces the marketizing trends that rank and exclude, some nonprofits do attempt to serve students in culturally relevant ways within this environment, and can even work in ways that support publicly funded programs.
Altogether, my research provides insight into the role that the privatization of public spaces within neoliberalism plays in the formation and reproduction of classed and raced citizens, as policy makers, funders, and program administrators determine which young people are given access to which forms of education
Determination of the strong coupling αs from transverse energy-energy correlations in multi-jet events at â s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
Tesis Doctoral inĂ©dita leĂda en la Universidad AutĂłnoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de FĂsica TeĂłrica. Fecha de Lectura: 24-02-202
A Framework for Site-Specific Spatial Audio Applications
As audio recording and reproduction technology has advanced over the past five decades, increasing attention has been paid to recreating the highly spatialised listening experience we understand from our physical environment. This is the logical next step in the quest for increasing audio clarity, particularly as virtual reality gaming and augmented reality experiences become more widespread.
This study sought to develop and demonstrate a technical framework for the production of site-specific audio-based works that is user-friendly and cost effective. The system was intended to be used by existing content producers and audio programmers to work collaboratively with a range of site-based organisations such as museums and galleries to produce an audio augmentation of the physicality of the space.
This research was guided by four key aims:
1. Demonstrate a compositional method for immersive spatial audio that references the novel physical environment and the listenerâs movement within it.
2. Describe a framework for the development and deployment of a spatial audio visitor technology system.
3. Prototype a naturalistic method for the delivery and navigation of contextual information via audio.
4. Deploy, demonstrate, and evaluate a spatial audio experience within a representative environment.
The resulting system makes use of a range of existing technologies to provide a development experience and output that meets a clearly defined set of criteria.
Furthermore, a case study application has been developed that demonstrates the use of the system to augment a selection of six paintings in a gallery space. For each of these paintings, a creative spatial composition was produced that demonstrates the principles of spatial composition discussed in this thesis. A spoken informational layer sits on top of this acting as a museum audio guide, featuring navigation using head gestures for a hands-free experience. This thesis presents a detailed discussion of the artistic intentions and techniques employed in the production of the six soundscapes, as well as an evaluation of the resulting application in use in a public gallery space
A Process for the Restoration of Performances from Musical Errors on Live Progressive Rock Albums
In the course of my practice of producing live progressive rock albums, a significant
challenge has emerged: how to repair performance errors while retaining the intended
expressive performance. Using a practice as research methodology, I develop a novel process,
Error Analysis and Performance Restoration (EAPR), to restore a performerâs intention where
an error was assessed to have been made. In developing this process, within the context of
my practice, I investigate: the nature of live albums and the groups to which I am
accountable, a definition of performance errors, an examination of their causes, and the
existing literature on these topics. In presenting EAPR, I demonstrate, drawing from existing
research, a mechanism by which originally intended performances can be extracted from
recorded errors. The EAPR process exists as a conceptual model; each album has a specific
implementation to address the needs of that album, and the currently available technology.
Restoration techniques are developed as part of this implementation. EAPR is developed and
demonstrated through my work restoring performances on a front-line commercial live
release, the Creative Submission Album. The specific EAPR implementation I design for it is
laid out, and detailed examples of its techniques demonstrated
Magic Lantern Tales: A Music/Text Analysis of the Vocal Works of Cheryl-Frances-Hoad
This document explores Cheryl Frances-Hoadâs song cycle Magic Lantern Tales, as a highlight of her oeuvre as well as of contemporary art song. Each song in the cycle, and a select few of Frances-Hoadâs other vocal works, will be studied from a performerâs perspective to identify Frances-Hoadâs compositional approach to song, as well as her individual style in Magic Lantern Tales. The document examines stylistic features and unifying elements of Frances-Hoadâs vocal repertoire, with particular emphasis on music/text relationships. This document is motivated by a desire to raise awareness of Frances-Hoadâs vocal literature. Serving as an introduction to Frances-Hoad and her vocal music, this document offers a biography of the composer and a music/text analysis of some of her vocal works, specifically Magic Lantern Tales. For each of her songs examined, background, compositional style, and text setting will be considered. A study of each of these elements, combined and in conjunction with the context of the poetry, will reveal Frances-Hoadâs approach to portraying a story, especially through text painting. It will also explore the role this particular cycle plays as a historical commemoration of World War I. As the proverbial saying goes, âTell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.â Music not only involves, but has the power to move and change us. The commemorative nature of this song cycle in accordance with compositional and performance devices that carry the power of the words, and ultimately the stories, to the hearts of the listener, can create an experience of remembrance that ensures historical preservation through music. Ultimately my intention is to demonstrate the significance of Magic Lantern Tales to the genre of modern art song, and perhaps more importantly, to demonstrate Cheryl Frances-Hoadâs merit as a living song composer. In addition, this study of Frances-Hoadâs compositional style and approach to storytelling will hopefully bring a wider awareness of her vocal music as a whole, and will promote more frequent performances of this music among students and professionals alike
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