On topics today

This article surveys the state of so-called topic theory today. It charts its development through two generations of topic theorists. The first is constructed around three influential texts: Leonard Ratners seminal book that established the discipline in its own right, Classic music: expression, form and style (1980); Wye Allanbrooks. Rhythmic gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (1983); and Kofi Agawus. Playing with signs: a semiotic interpretation of classical music (1991). The second comprises significant advances in topic theory essayed through two further pairs of texts: Robert Hattens Musical meaning in Beethoven: markedness, correlation, and interpretation (1994) and Interpreting musical gestures, topics, and tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (2004); and Raymond Monelles Linguistics and semiotics in music (1992) and The sense of music: semiotic essays (2000). Topic Theory's role as the soft hermeneutic sub-field of music semiotics (relative to the harder, formalist practices of Nattiezs neutral level analysis) is portrayed here as navigating a number of treacherous polemical paths. These wend their way between referential style (expression) and structural syntax (form); historical reconstruction and hermeneutic construction; and heightened sensitivity to social meanings and imposed acts of creative interpretation. This existence of topic theory in a continuous dialogue between structural formalism and the semantics of expressive discourse is held responsible for its marginal position both to the dominant strains of contemporary postmodern musicology and to the dying embers of formalist analysis. The failure of topic theory to strike a fashionable text-context balance thus highlights why musicology continues to view semiotics with scepticism. Ratner presents his thesaurus of style labelssomewhat dubiouslyas the historically authentic ready-to-hand materials (types and styles) of eighteenth-century expressive musical rhetoric. But it is Agawus combination of this universe of topics with a Schenker-influenced beginning-middle-end paradigm that establishes the hallmark of first generation topic theory on which the first half of this paper focuses. Agawus delicate equation between extroversive and introversive semiosis is essayed as a pivotal turning point in topic theorys ability to transcend the mere passive ascription of rhetorical labels. Out of this equation, expressive meanings can ariseas much from the non-congruence, as the congruence, of signs and structure. Hatten's critique of Agawu for neglecting the full interpretative consequences of his signifieds is the springboard for his more hermeneutically replete brand of topic theory and the emergence of the second generation topic theorists. Hattens use of troping (a kind of musical metaphor), is one of many interpretative tools that are responsible for broadening the arena of topic theorysome of his others being: expressive genres, emergent meanings and markedness theory. These are deployed across a variety of musical parameters as Hattens attention increasingly turns to the prototypicality of topics in their euphoric and dysphoric states. Hattens interpretative work is shown to transcend historical reconstruction to comprise creative interpretation built on a much broader definition of expressive gestures, of which topics are only a constituent part. The article concludes with Monelles expos of the dubious historical underpinnings of Ratners topic theory foundations. This does not render this vibrant branch of semiotics redundant but, on the contrary, charts its future direction as one calling out for far deeper historical investigation and cultural criticism. Monelles enlightening forays into the more replete expressive meanings of such topics as the horse and pianto make this point abundantly clear. The future of topics today, if not musicology in general, is one of cultural criticism

Teach phenomenology the bomb: Starship Troopers, the technologized body, and humanitarian warfare

Paul Verhoeven's SF films are often concerned with how the future body will be reshaped as a technological device. Starship Troopers strangely departs from Verhoeven's own work, other SF films, and current directions in cultural theory by seeing the future body as one that is more organic than mechanical. Drawing upon and challenging ideas developed by Paul Virilio, this article argues that Starship Troopers' departure from the notion of the 'post-human' mechanized body needs to be understood not as a nostalgic reassertion of de-technologized subjectivity. Rather, Verhoeven's film sees the idea of the pure body as a dangerous anachronism. And, this article further argues, Starship Troopers suggests that narratives of human salvation - such as those that arose during Nato's interventions in the Balkans - often conceal an appetite for territorial conquest

The compass of possibilities: re-mapping the suburbs of Los Angeles in the writings of D.J. Waldie

This article uses the works of the writer, memoirist, and Lakewood, California public official, D. J. Waldie to deepen our concept of “region” and to re-assess many of the stereotypical discourses associated with the American suburbs. In the fashionable parlance of Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, Los Angeles has become defined by its “suburban badlands”; however, Waldie‘s work takes a different view in which his suburban home in LA is the focus for a more complex, multi-faceted approach to post-war suburbia. Typified by his re-assessment of the suburban grid as a “compass of possibilities,” his writings encourage a more nuanced and layered view of the communities and cultures fostered in such places. His key work Holy Land is an argument about why a disregarded place, an ordinary place like suburbia, can in fact contain qualities of life that are profound and reassuring. Through examining his work in its cultural and theoretical context this article looks below the expected “grid” of suburbia to demonstrate the rich life beyond its apparent anonymity

Preface to Seeds of Something Different

The UC Santa Cruz Library announces its publication of a groundbreaking new book, SEEDS OF SOMETHING DIFFERENT: AN ORAL HISTORY OF UC SANTA CRUZ that weaves together first-person accounts of the campus’s evolution, from the origins of an audacious dream through the sea changes of five decades.More than 200 narrators contribute to this two-volume collective chronicle, edited by oral historians Irene Reti, Cameron Vanderscoff, and Sarah Rabkin. Five years in the making, the book draws on the Library Regional History Project’s extensive archive of oral history interviews with students, staff, faculty, community members, and campus leaders. The text is accompanied by some 250 images from the University Library’s Special Collections and Archives.Seeds of Something Different sheds new light on UCSC’s first half-century. In advance praise for this dynamic account, UCSC alumna and noted radio producer Nikki Silva wrote, “I kept marveling, ‘So that's what was happening!’ I could not put it down.”The book offers useful insights not only for readers who know and love the campus, but for anyone who cares about the past and future of public higher education. As University of Pennsylvania Professor of Education and History Jonathan Zimmerman notes in his foreword, “the University of California, Santa Cruz [is] the largest—and, arguably, the most important—educational experiment in the history of American higher education . . . part of a remarkable wave of innovation in the 1960s, when at least forty different alternative colleges and universities sprouted across the United States.”Since its inception, UC Santa Cruz has, like the cultural and political milieu it both reflects and influences, undergone profound transformation. In contrast to tales of either tragic decline or triumphant reinvention that the campus tends to inspire, Seeds of Something Different offers a nuanced telling of UCSC’s complex and sometimes contradictory history. This is a story in multiple acts, featuring multiple perspectives, complete with recurring characters, surprising plot twists, unlikely endings, and new beginnings

Organic barley producers' desired qualities for crop improvement

Barley fits well into many different organic farming systems. It can be grown as either a winter or spring annual crop in many temperate regions. Barley can be used for food, malting, or animal feed, providing growers with diverse marketing opportunities. Despite its advantages, many organic farmers in the USA have not adopted barley as a regular crop in their rotation. Researchers surveyed organic barley producers to discover what they considered to be the main obstacles to growing barley. The primary obstacles identified were limited markets and price. Breeding and development of high-quality barley suitable for organic systems and specialty markets may be a way to expand markets and secure a better price. Farmers identified yield as the most important agronomic trait of interest, but other traits such as nutritional quality were also highly ranked. Naked (hull-less) barley bred for multi-use quality is a possible alternative that allows organic farmers to sell into multiple markets. Most respondents expressed interest in the development of such varieties suitable for organic farming conditions. The researchers conducted follow-up interviews to obtain detailed information on how barley is used in organic farming systems, production practices, costs of production, and what traits farmers would like to see breeders focus on

Literacy as an Act of Creative Resistance: Joining the Work of Incarcerated Teaching Artists at a Maximum-Security Prison

Considering the situated complexities and competing interest of exploitation and hope inherent in community literacy work, this article examines the ways that the Community Arts Program (CAP) at California State Prison-Sacramento complicates and also reifies archetypal grand literacy narratives and considers the place of such narratives within a broader argument for literacy as acts of creative resistance scaffolded by small, organic, tactical moves