Border Songs: Bringing the Immigration Crisis to the Classroom with Music

During fall semester of 2010, I began taking students on five-day field trips to the Arizona–Mexico border. One part of these trips involves meeting with sound sculptor Glenn Weyant, who plays the border wall as a musical instrument. Weyant attaches contact microphones to the wall and plays it, sometimes bowing the steel structure with a cello bow, and other times playing it rhythmically with what he calls “instruments of mass percussion.

Reading Spanish American national anthems: “Sonograms” of national identity

Analysis of the text, music, and historical development of representative Spanish American national anthems. Primarily concentrating on the Chilean and Costa Rican himnos nacionales

(Ef)Facing the Face of Nationalism: Wrestling Masks in Chicano and Mexican Performance Art

Masks serve as particularly effective props in contemporary Mexican and Chicano performance art because of a number of deeply rooted traditions in Mexican culture. This essay explores the mask as code of honor in Mexican culture, and foregrounds the manner in which a number of contemporary Mexican and Chicano artists and performers strategically employ wrestling masks to (ef)face the mask-like image of Mexican or U.S. nationalism. I apply the label performance artist broadly, to include musicians and political figures that integrate an exaggerated sense of theatricality into their performances. Following the early work of Roland Barthes, I read performances as texts in which the wrestling masks function as immediately recognizable signs. I argue that by masking their identity and alluding to popular mask traditions, Chicano and Mexican performance artists make visible, and interrogate, the national face(s) of power

Discovery of an Apparent High Latitude Galactic Supernova Remnant

Deep H$\alpha$ images of a faint emission complex 4.0 x 5.5 degrees in angular extent and located far off the Galactic plane at l = 70.0 degrees, b=-21.5 degrees reveal numerous thin filaments suggestive of a supernova remnant's shock emission. Low dispersion optical spectra covering the wavelength range 4500 - 7500 A show only Balmer line emissions for one filament while three others show a Balmer dominated spectrum along with weak [N I] 5198, 5200 A, [O I] 6300, 6364 A, [N II] 6583 A, [S II] 6716, 6731 A and in one case [O III] 5007 A line emission. Many of the brighter H$\alpha$ filaments are visible in near UV GALEX images presumably due to C III] 1909 A line emission. ROSAT All Sky Survey images of this region show a faint crescent shaped X-ray emission nebula coincident with the portion of the H$\alpha$ nebulosity closest to the Galactic plane. The presence of long, thin Balmer dominated emission filaments with associated UV emission and coincident X-ray emission suggests this nebula is a high latitude Galactic supernova remnant despite a lack of known associated nonthermal radio emission. Relative line intensities of the optical lines in some filaments differ from commonly observed [S II]/H$\alpha$ > 0.4 radiative shocked filaments and typical Balmer filaments in supernova remnants. We discuss possible causes for the unusual optical SNR spectra.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted to the Astrophysical Journa

ASASSN-14ko is a Periodic Nuclear Transient in ESO 253-G003

We present the discovery that ASASSN-14ko is a periodically flaring AGN at the center of the galaxy ESO 253-G003. At the time of its discovery by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), it was classified as a supernova close to the nucleus. The subsequent six years of V- and g-band ASAS-SN observations reveal that ASASSN-14ko has nuclear flares occurring at regular intervals. The seventeen observed outbursts show evidence of a decreasing period over time, with a mean period of $P_0 = 114.2 \pm 0.4$ days and a period derivative of $\dot{P} = -0.0017\pm0.0003$. The most recent outburst in May 2020, which took place as predicted, exhibited spectroscopic changes during the rise and a had a UV bright, blackbody spectral energy distribution similar to tidal disruption events (TDEs). The X-ray flux decreased by a factor of 4 at the beginning of the outburst and then returned to its quiescent flux after ~8 days. TESS observed an outburst during Sectors 4-6, revealing a rise time of $5.60 \pm 0.05$ days in the optical and a decline that is best fit with an exponential model. We discuss several possible scenarios to explain ASASSN-14ko's periodic outbursts, but currently favor a repeated partial TDE. The next outbursts should peak in the optical on UT 2020-09-7.4$\pm$1.1 and UT 2020-12-26.5$\pm$1.4.Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures, 7 tables. Will be submitted to ApJ. The latest flare is currently ongoing, as we predicte