Big Feelings and Critical NostalgiaReleased in January 2024, I Saw the TV Glow (ISTTVG) caused an improbable sensation for an arthouse film that never quite coheres into a recognizable genre. Though horrifying, it can’t be called a horror movie; at the same time, though highly stylized and full of teenaged existentialism, it’s too… Read More
En el año 2017, comenzó un periodo de transformaciones profundas para las luchas democráticas por el derecho al aborto libre y gratuito en Argentina. Entre marzo y agosto de 2018, se realizó a nivel nacional una serie de manifestaciones en apoyo a las instancias legislativas del proyecto de… Read More
“Y Volver, Volver~, Volver!” (And Come Back, Come Back~, Come Back!): as the explosive chorus of his signature song still mourns, Vicente Fernández Gómez, known as Chente, died on 12 December 2021 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, after 60 prolific years as a singer, actor, and film producer. The… Read More
Reflections on the Errant Voices Conference, April 2022 Consider the adjective “errant.” The word might describe a misbehaving child careening through the galleries of the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, or a knight cresting the peak of a mountain in search of his dragon. An errant traveler might be pursuing a… Read More
Conferences are inflection points: moments where energies come together and reflect outward in new directions. The following is a report of the May 2022 “Ruptures and Convergences” Conference, hosted by the Music Studies and the Anthropocene Research Network. In the following recap of conference proceedings, I frame the comings and… Read More
The phrase “quintessentially American” arises frequently with reference to country music. In Ken Burns’s 2019 Country Music documentary series and many other instances, it reiterates an established truism—but is there any truth to it? In what sense might country, long known as white music, be quintessentially American music? … Read More
Ed. note: This essay is an offshoot from a lecture originally presented as the AMS Committee on Women and Gender Annual Endowed Lecture. Fred Maus and Tes Slominski read responses to that spoken delivery. These are also available to read (Maus; Slominski). I am grateful for the opportunity… Read More
Three days after the July 4th mass shooting in Chicago I woke up to a piece of news on the homepage of the World Journal, the largest Chinese-language newspaper in the United States. An elderly Korean American man in Flushing, Queens, was approached and shoved at a gas station by… Read More
I have this theory about Indians. Actually, the theory is not really about Indians, it’s about everyone else. Here’s the thing: although I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, generally speaking white people who are interested in Indians are not very bright. Generally speaking white… Read More
What makes a voice sound beautiful, or meaningful, or authoritative? And what is at stake for singers when the vocal sounds associated with authority originated from a history of harm? On her most recent album, She Walks in Beauty (2021), singer Marianne Faithfull probes these questions by musically re-imagining the… Read More