Ada Lovelace Day: Delia Who?

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. In honor of the first person to write what would later be known as a “computer program,” I want to think about women and music technology. Many readers of this blog probably already know who…

The Other Important Musical Release in 1991, or, McClary’s Feminine Endings is 20 years old, but there’s still no feminist philosophy of music

Feminist musicology as we know it is only 20 years old. Susan McClary’s landmark book Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality was released in 1991—the same year that Nirvana broke on pop radio. While the latter release is being widely…

Thoughts on philoSOPHIA 2011: Intro

philoSOPHIA is always one of my favorite conferences. It’s full of amazing people doing amazing work, and it’s small enough to have productive, meaningful exchanges. In order to continue some of these exchanges, and to hopefully bring in some new…

Follow me on Twitter

I’ve had a twitter account for ages, but I’ve finally decided to actually use it. I’m limiting my feed to blog-related topics: it’s more or less the aphorism division of its-her-factory. There’s a link on the left hand side of…

Rest In Peace, Polly Styrene

X-Ray Spex singer Polly Styrene died today. So sad. And so soon after Ari Up!

When Maya Angelou and James Baldwin Walked into a Bar…

A great–and true!–story, via Feminist Law Professors’ Bridget Crawford: When Maya Angelou and James Baldwin Walked into a Bar… Maya Angelou recently donated 343 boxes of her papers to the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black…

“This robot is so not a ‘dick in drag'”, Entry 1: Madonna

Precisely because she extols the liberatory power of hetero sex, Madonna remains firmly within the humanism that Lee Edelman identifies as “reproductive futurism.” In spite of all the love she gets from 80s white feminists and from gay men, Madonna’s…

Telephone, Video Phone, Stronger: Our Work Is Never Over

So, I’ve been working on a reading of Gaga’s Telephone video, but that’s become more of a project than I originally anticipated. So, while I’m still working on that, some initial thoughts regarding the video’s interpretive context. Here’s Gaga’s video:…

Gaga Variations, or Gaga on Bach and tonality

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/7221051/Lady-Gaga-Ive-always-been-famous-you-just-didnt-know-it.html Gaga, when you say stuff like this, how can I not totally

Beyonce/Gaga: Dear Dr. Mulvey, Video Is Not Narrative Cinema

Beyonce and Lady Gaga have a newish video out for their collaboration “Video Phone”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtIdxk2zqXs The men in the video all have cameras for heads: This might be seen as a literalization of Laura Mulvey’s (in)famous article “Visual Pleasure and…