These Are Sia’s Breaks: on vocal technique & queering feminine resilience
Sia, famous first as a songwriter and second as a vocalist, never eschews authorial voice. However, her signature as a pop star, the thing that stands out as her ‘brand’ in the way cupcake bras might for Katy…
Is the Post- in post-identity the Post- in post-genre?
I’m giving a talk this Friday, 25 March at Columbia University. Here are the details. Here is a link to the text of the talk. I’ve pasted the intro below so you can get a preview. From “race records” to…
Remarks for Author-Meets-Critics on Resilience & Melancholy at philoSOPHIA 2016
Thanks to Sina Kramer, Adriel Trott, Jana McAuliffe, and Bryan Kimto for organizing and participating in an author-meets-critics session on Resilience & Melancholy at philoSOPHIA 2016. I’m always humbled when people spend their time and their energy thinking with and…
Interesting and/or Important Songs in 2015
When I teach pop music classes, I want my students to learn to separate aesthetic judgments (whether a song is good or bad, whether they love it or hate it) from scholarly arguments about significance (what’s important and/or interesting about…
The bros go ‘full Janet’ while Janet thinks she shoulda known better
Joseph Gordon-Levitt made a splash on with some hardcore Janet drag. Performing an edit of Rhythm Nation 1814, he dressed up like Janet from the video, complete with ponytail. The most impressive part was his execution of the video’s (and…
Why is there no music analysis in feminist theory?
This MTO call for “Feminist Music Theory” got me thinking…. Feminist Theory is a body of theoretical, philosophical work that crosses women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, literature, film and media studies, art history, cultural studies, ethnic studies, theology and…
BBHMM, Gender, Property, & Sound: part 1, the video
So, here it is, my extra-freezing-cold-take on Rihanna’s BBHMM. I’ve broken it down into three parts, which I’ll publish over the next three days. It’s long and unedited — one of those ‘ima barf out my ideas here for refining…
BBHMM, Gender, Property, & Sound: part 2, bizarro pornotroping
This is part 2 of a too-longread piece on Rihanna’s BBHMM. Pornotroping & Property This destabilization of cisbinary gender in general, and her character’s “sonic” gender identity is one of the main techniques BBHMM uses to reroute the…
BBHMM, Gender, Property, & Sound: part 3, who cares?
This is the final part in a too-longread piece on Rihanna’s BBHMM. In order to redirect the typical flow of property, Rihanna’s character has to turn and deviate the practices of racialized sexual violence that produce post-feminist subjects and bare…
Academic negging
“Negging” is a tactic pickup artists use to get women’s attention. It’s basically the opposite of a compliment: you tell someone something negative about them, comment on a less-than-ideal quality, etc. The idea is that it undermines the recipient’s confidence…
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