Basically Intelligent: The Blind, Intelligence, and Gender in Argentina, 1880-1939

My dissertation examines the links between disability, intellectuality, labor and gender in Argentina between 1887 and 1939. It demonstrates how intellectual capacity and education created distinctions between the blind and other disabled populations. Those distinctions helped organizations for the blind acquire private and public resources for projects designed to make the blind independent through occupational training. However, the same arguments that aided organizations drove debates over the definition of independence for the blind. Sighted activists believed education would diminish the dependency of the blind on their families and social services through the sale of small crafts. Blind leaders believed that education would create self-sufficiency through access to well-paid and dignified labor. Debates about education were contemporary with the rise of international medical theories about heredity that informed political debates on social policy. These theories labeled the intellectually and mentally disabled as particularly dangerous to national health. Blind activists hoped that by securing the idea that the blind were intellectually normal, they could secure blind men dignified employment. What constituted dignified labor was, however, contested. Conservative activists argued that any work that allowed blind men to provide for their family was dignified. Activists with connections to the left argued that only jobs in which the blind competed with the sighted, and were accepted as equals, represented dignified employment. The conflict between these two viewpoints drove the expansion of institutes for the blind but also divided relatively scarce resources. Once sparked, debate about the direction and purpose of programs for the blind continued until the creation of a comprehensive institute in 1939

Music as Narrative in American College Football

American college football features an enormous amount of music woven into the fabric of the event, with selections accompanying approximately two-thirds of a game’s plays. Musical selections are controlled by a number of forces, including audio and video technicians, university marketing departments, financial sponsors, and wind bands. These blend together in a complex design that offers audible and visual stimulation to the audience during the game’s pauses. The music chosen for performance in these moments frequently communicates meaning beyond entertainment value. Selections reinforce the game’s emotional drive, cue celebrations, direct specific audience actions, and prompt behaviors that can directly impact the game. Beyond this, music is performed to buttress the successes of the home team, and to downplay its failures. As this process develops over the course of the game, the musical selections construct a sonic narrative that comments on the game’s action, enhancing or suppressing audience members’ emotional reactions to the events on-field, and informing their understanding of the game’s developments. By preparing for and responding to in-game situations, music creates a coherent narrative out of football’s unpredictable events. This project demonstrates the use of musical narrative in American college football via close consideration of case studies of games representing five of the most prominent college athletic conferences, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac 12, and the Southeastern Conference. These sources include interviews with college football’s musical agents, including sound operators, band directors, and producers, as well as documentation of the games’ on-field developments and the music that accompanies them. Finally, this project utilizes of musical narrative as a new means of critically considering the power lines of race and gender in college football culture

Bowdoin Orient v.136, no.1-25 (2006-2007)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1007/thumbnail.jp

Music as Narrative in American College Football

American college football features an enormous amount of music woven into the fabric of the event, with selections accompanying approximately two-thirds of a game’s plays. Musical selections are controlled by a number of forces, including audio and video technicians, university marketing departments, financial sponsors, and wind bands. These blend together in a complex design that offers audible and visual stimulation to the audience during the game’s pauses. The music chosen for performance in these moments frequently communicates meaning beyond entertainment value. Selections reinforce the game’s emotional drive, cue celebrations, direct specific audience actions, and prompt behaviors that can directly impact the game. Beyond this, music is performed to buttress the successes of the home team, and to downplay its failures. As this process develops over the course of the game, the musical selections construct a sonic narrative that comments on the game’s action, enhancing or suppressing audience members’ emotional reactions to the events on-field, and informing their understanding of the game’s developments. By preparing for and responding to in-game situations, music creates a coherent narrative out of football’s unpredictable events. This project demonstrates the use of musical narrative in American college football via close consideration of case studies of games representing five of the most prominent college athletic conferences, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac 12, and the Southeastern Conference. These sources include interviews with college football’s musical agents, including sound operators, band directors, and producers, as well as documentation of the games’ on-field developments and the music that accompanies them. Finally, this project utilizes of musical narrative as a new means of critically considering the power lines of race and gender in college football culture