Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought, creative practice and scholarship. The Performance Philosophy book series comprises monographs and essay collections addressing the relationship between performance and philosophy within a broad range of philosophical traditions and performance practices, including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art and music. The series also includes studies of the performative aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of performance as well as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance.

Long Description:
An American Playgoer at Home serves as a companion volume to An American Playgoer in London. It captures the author’s theatregoing on his home territory in Northampton and Amherst, Massachusetts, in Hartford, Connecticut, in New York City, and in other places in the USA and in Canada as well. As a companion volume it covers approximately the same period of roughly four decades, from the early 1970s into the second decade of the new century. Almost all of the reviews are of live theatre; a few are of films that have an important dramatic quality or are a film version of an existing play, as in the instance of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.

Word Count: 187703

ISBN: 978-1-945764-13-4

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This course surveys the development of popular music in the United States and in a cross-cultural milieu relative to the history and sociology of the last two hundred years. It examines the ethnic mixture that characterizes modern music, how it reflects many rich traditions and styles, and provides a background for understanding the musical vocabulary of current popular music styles.

This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples — sound art, environmental recordings, music — will be provided and invited throughout the term.

This course examines traditional performances of the Arabic-speaking populations of the Middle East and North Africa. Starting with the history of the ways in which the West has discovered, translated and written about the Orient, we will consider how power and politics play roles in the production of culture, narrative and performance. This approach assumes that performance, verbal art, and oral literature lend themselves to spontaneous adaptation and to oblique expression of ideas and opinions whose utterance would otherwise be censorable or disruptive. In particular we will be concerned with the way traditional performance practices are affected by and respond to the consequences of modernization.
Topics include oral epic performance, sacred narrative, Koranic chant performance, the folktale, solo performance, cultural production and resistance.

A Metabiological Pentateuch

Short Description:
In this bold cycle of five plays, featuring an extensive introduction, George Bernard Shaw examines society’s ills and imagines a solution which takes his audience from the Garden of Eden to as far as thought can reach.

Long Description:
Can modern civilization honestly hope to have competent leaders, given that the complexities of society are too great for any one person to truly grasp? Even back in 1921, George Bernard Shaw thought such expectations were unrealistic. How then can contemporary societies hope to thrive?

For modern civilizations to prosper, Shaw argues that increased longevity is essential. In Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch, Shaw imagines a history in which extreme longevity can be reached through creative evolution, a process motivated by humanity’s creative impulse. Although Shaw rooted his theories in Lamarckian science, which has since fallen out of scientific favor, Shaw’s artistic achievements continue to demand our attention.

Back to Methuselah features an extensive introduction that details Shaw’s ideas and five plays which bring those ideas to life, imagining a new human history, stretching out one idea, one myth, from the Garden of Eden to as far as thought can reach. A metabiological pentateuch, indeed.

Word Count: 112336

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Long Description:
For several decades, Chicanx and Indigenous theatermakers have been repurposing Shakespeare’s plays to reflect the histories and lived realities of the US–Mexico Borderlands and to create space to tell stories of and for La Frontera. Celebrating this rich tradition, The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera brings a wide range of Borderlands Shakespeare plays together for the first time in a multi-volume open-access scholarly edition.

This anthology celebrates the dynamic, multilingual reworking of canon and place that defines Borderlands Shakespeare, and it situates these geographically and temporally diverse plays within the robust study of Shakespeare’s global afterlives. The editors offer a critical framework for understanding the artistic and political traditions that shape these plays and the place of Shakespeare within the multilayered colonial histories of the region. Borderlands Shakespeare plays, they contend, do not simply reproduce Shakespeare in new contexts but rather use his work in innovative ways to negotiate colonial power and to envision socially just futures.

Word Count: 105607

ISBN: 9780866988407

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This open book by Catherine Schmidt-Jones has units on time elements (rhythm and meter), pitch elements (timbre, melody, and harmony), and the combination of these elements. The textbook is being provided in both PDF and html formats for download.

This class surveys the music of the Beatles, from the band’s early years to the break-up of the group, mapping how the Beatle’s musical style changed from skiffle and rock to studio-based experimentation. Cultural influences that helped to shape them, as well as the group’s influence worldwide, will be a continuous theme.

This course will present students with an overview of Brazilian popular music, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Considered an advanced course, it aims to build vocabulary competence and improve oral communication through the study and discussion of topics about cultural aspects and current issues in Brazil. It is designed to give students extensive experience in Portuguese and emphasizes skill development and refinement in the area of critical reading and writing in Portuguese.

This course surveys Romantic musical genres including song, choral music, opera, piano sonata, character cycle, concerto, symphony, and symphonic poem, including the composers Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler. Written essays and oral presentations are based on live performances as well as listening and reading assignments.

This is an intermediate workshop designed for students who have a basic understanding of the principles of theatrical design and who want a more intensive study of costume design and the psychology of clothing. Students develop designs that emerge through a process of character analysis, based on the script and directorial concept. Period research, design, and rendering skills are fostered through practical exercises. Instruction in basic costume construction, including drafting and draping, provide tools for students to produce final projects.

This new annotated guide (part of a series devoted to resources for enjoying or teaching astronomy) features over 250 pieces of music inspired by serious astronomy, including both classical and popular music examples. YouTube links are given for the vast majority, so you (or your students) can listen to them.

Among the pieces included is:
1) a Hubble Space Telescope cantata,
2) eight rock songs about black holes with reasonable science,
3) a supernova piano sonata,
4) a musical exploration of the Messier catalog of nebulae, clusters, and galaxies,
5) a moving song about Stephen Hawking,
6) Moon songs by the Grateful Dead, George Harrison, and the Police,
7) piano pieces “for children with small hands” named after the constellations,
8) operas about Galileo, Kepler, and Einstein,
and many more.

This course provides an introduction to the major popular music cultures of the Chinese-speaking world. We will consider a wide variety of genres, from Shanghainese shidaiqu to Cantopop to Taiwanese rap, with the goal of listening beyond the notion of a monolithic "Chinese popular music" to something more dynamic, multivocal, and translocal. We will ask: What, if anything, is so "Chinese" about Chinese popular music? How does popular music participate in the formation of identities for artists and audiences in these areas? How does it enable the articulation of diverging social and political values while also facilitating meaningful connections among disparate communities? We will approach these questions through a diverse array of source materials, including sound recordings, music videos, films, and online multimedia.

This class explores composition and arrangement for the large jazz ensemble from 1920s foundations to current postmodern practice. Consideration given to a variety of styles and to the interaction of improvisation and composition. Study of works by Basie, Ellington, Evans, Gillespie, Golson, Mingus, Morris, Nelson, Williams, and others. Open rehearsals, workshops, and performances of student compositions by the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra.

This class explores sound and what can be done with it. Sources are recorded from students' surroundings - sampled and electronically generated (both analog and digital). Assignments include composing with the sampled sounds, feedback, and noise, using digital signal processing (DSP), convolution, algorithms, and simple mixing. The class focuses on sonic and compositional aspects rather than technology, math, or acoustics, though these are examined in varying detail. Students complete weekly composition and listening assignments; material for the latter is drawn from sound art, experimental electronica, conventional and non-conventional classical electronic works, popular music, and previous students' compositions.

This YouTube channel hosts a series of short (about 15 min) talks and performances for the Pavlov/Tertis Project, which explores connections between music and psychology. The talks were written and delivered by Michael Domjan, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, who is an internationally recognized expert in conditioning and learning. Dr. Domjan also received training as a violist in the preparatory division of the Juilliard School of Music. In this series of videos, he combines his knowledge of psychology with his knowledge of music. Topics include How is psychology relevant to music, Neuroscience and music, Habituation and sensitization in the music of J. S. Bach, Types of memory in musical performance, Why is it harder to teach playing the violin. than playing baseball, What is a Tertis viola?, How is Pavlovian conditioning relevant to music?, Talent vs practice in musical expertise, Why is it important to practice a musical instrument, and What I learned in a music conservatory that made me a better scientist.

This class provides an overview of some of the techniques used in creating costume pieces that are crafted rather than sewn. We will use a variety of materials and techniques to create specific costume pieces while at the same time exploring alternative applications possible for each material/technique.

This course examines cultural performances of Asia, including both traditional and contemporary forms, in a variety of genres. Students will explore the communicative power of performances with attention to the ways performers, media, cultural settings, and audiences interact. The representation of cultural difference is considered and how it is altered through processes of globalization. Performances are viewed live when possible, but the course also relies on video, audio, and online materials as necessary. There are no prerequisites for this course and it is taught in English.

This module has been created by Dr. Carly Johnson, Chair of the Department of Music at Alabama State University, to supplement commercial textbooks available for college-level conducting courses.  The culturally diverse images, musical scores, and videos featured in the module provide more inclusive content, representative of students from historically marginalized groups, and aid in deconstructing racial, ethnic, and gender biases often associated with the study of Western art music and with holding leadership positions in music.  The module begins with reflective questioning, identifying and examining equity barriers in Western art music, and ends with pathway resources for underrepresented students to pursue additional study beyond the conclusion of the course. Included in this module are several activities and assessments that can be used in a variety of ways, suitable for both in-person teaching or for synchronous or asynchronous online instruction.