Scary Monsters and Pervasive Slights: Genre Construction, Mainstreaming, and Processes of Authentication and Gendered Discourse in Dubstep

This thesis examines discourses on dubstep, a currently popular form of electronic dance music (EDM). The thesis identifies discursive patterns in the received historical narrative of EDM and explores how those patterns may or may not manifest themselves in the current discourses on dubstep. The analysis explores how the value of electronic dance music has historically been judged according to frameworks of authenticity rooted in jazz and folk traditions that were later adopted and adapted by rock. Consumers and critics of EDM in general, and dubstep in particular, are found to deploy key elements of rock’s framework of authenticity in the making of judgments about dubstep’s value. Furthermore, the gender politics of these judgments tend to reproduce a masculinist disposition seemingly at odds with the ideals of EDM culture. Thus, this thesis investigates the problematic relationship between traditional notions of authenticity and the shifting values of the EDM community

“Where Words Fail, Music Speaks”: The Experience of Adapting Literature to Music

Adaptation is a relatively new yet growing academic field consisting mainly of research on the modification of book into film. This study endeavors to expand the discourse on adaptation to the modal transformation of literary works to music. By using this specific adaptive type to examine the process and functionality of adapted works, I was able to address several key aspects of modern adaptation, including the hot-button issue of fidelity to an established source text, the role of adaptor as co-author, and the ability of solitary artistic modes to augment each other when combined. The resulting personal attempts at adaptation of a short poem to an accompanied vocal composition and an unaccompanied choral work were accomplished by the practical application of adaptive theory presented in several documents on the strategies behind the adaptive process. In using an experience-based approach, this study provides a hands-on look at the complex processes involved in adaptation and contributes to the growing body of adaptation research