American Popular Culture Commons^™

Adaptation Production Plan For “Cardigan, Betty, And August” From Taylor Swift's Folklore, Carlie Hillhouse

FUSION

This multimodal project creates a production plan for a fictional movie adaptation of Taylor Swift's popular songs "cardigan, betty, and august" from her 8th studio album, folklore. The production plan consists of details and descriptions for each cast member, filming locations, soundtrack, and key scenes to film for the movie.

The project was created in response to an assignment prompt that asked students to analyze how adaptation affects the way stories are told in different genres. Students had to consider audience reception, the portrayal of heroism, how mode affects a story's point-of-view, and how elements like key scenes and …

Defending The Call To Preach In Shirley Caesar’S Gospel Autobiography, Angela Nelson

Popular Culture Faculty Publications

Shirley Caesar, a celebrated, multiple award-winning gospel singer and preacher, used and retold stories about three transformative spiritual experiences to build a case for defending her call to preach. These ritualistic spiritual events included chronicling her conversion, spirit baptism, and call experiences. In this discussion, I examine the contexts of Caesar’s familial and religious backgrounds, Christian Protestant preaching culture and gender, Caesar’s “parable” and “prolegomenon” of purpose, and Caesar’s defense of her call to preach. I conclude by exploring the ways in which, as an “outsider within,” Caesar’s “defense case story” negotiated and dissented from theological narratives about the place …

Talking Heads, Fear Of Music, And The "Different Thinking" Of David Byrne, John Bruni

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This article proposes that the 2006 post on the website of David Byrne, the vocalist/guitarist of Talking Heads, announcing his self-diagnosis as an autistic person, invites a reappraisal of the band’s discography, especially Fear of Music (1979), which foregrounds his lyrical approach. Fear of Music, I suggest, relies on “autistic misdirections” that illustrate Byrne’s “different thinking” about his body, mind, communicative (in)ability, and relationship to physical spaces – all prominent and productive areas of exploration within critical autism studies.

“Different thinking” is taken from the 2020 memoir of Chris Frantz, the drummer of Talking Heads, in describing, retroactively, how …

Give The Drummer Some: A Dive Into Drum Breaks And Drum Break Production, Kyle Kaldhusdal

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper traces the history of hip-hop culture through the evolution of the drum break, the original context of drum breaks in funk and soul music, their influence on DJ culture, and the subsequent impact of drum breaks on music and music production. It follows the development of breakbeat compilations in the 1970s and 1980s, parallel to the development of turntablism and sampling techniques. It also examines in detail how copyright litigation in the 1990s shaped the development of sample-based music genres and created a niche market for originally-recorded drum breaks over the subsequent decades.

Purposefully Feminizing Masculinity: Femininity In Male Rock And Metal Stars 1950s - 1980s, Maria Myer

The Compass

Traditionally in Western culture, men have had the privilege of promoting rebellion while women have had to be submissive and socially desirable. This expectation applied to all women but especially women in the rock ‘n’ roll scene. The overwhelming loudness of rock and the typical message of rebellion was connected to the power that men held within society.¹ The combination of loud and fast paced music with the electronic nature of the instruments is what sets rock ‘n’ roll and metal apart from other genres. The attention that rock ‘n’ roll music demands, both from the challenging nature of …

“Foreign Soundingness” And Code-Switching Instead Of Translation: An Examination Of A Marketing Strategy In Contemporary Latino/A Music., Nerisha De Nil Padilla Cruz

Living in Languages

The focus of this investigation is to analyze the concept of “foreign soundingness” used by David Bellos in his essay “Fictions of the Foreign the Paradox of “Foreign-Soundingness” in the Latino/a music context. Specifically, it is interesting to see how code-switching between English and Spanish in certain songs can be used to connect with the US Latino/a community, but also be a “foreign soundingness” for the audience outside of the mainland. Additionally, I argue that due to the increase in the bilingual populace around the world, it is not necessary for contemporary artists to translate their music to a specific …

"I Want To Take You Higher": Popular Music Museums As Social Fields For Legitimizing Popular Music Memories, Olivia Paige Zinn

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This paper is an ethnographic and interview-based study of popular music museums in the United States. I observed that curatorial practices in pop music museums aligned with two major goals -- education and entertainment. These curatorial practices worked within the goals of the social field of museums as well as responded to the legacy of cultural hierarchy. I ultimately find that popular music museums are sites for legitimizing Americans' memories of and taste for popular music, rather than merely sites of music history education or entertainment.

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

MSU Graduate Theses

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Co-Writing Nashville Style: A Recital Of Selected Country Songwriters, Joseph H. Wandass Iv

Recital Papers

Country music and songwriting have been hallmark features of the Nashville music scene for well over a century. Due to the development of the concept of "the Nashville Dream," the idea that one can "make it" in music by moving to Nashville and writing songs, migratory patterns to Nashville from across the United States have changed the ways in which Nashville-based music is created and disseminated. In the thesis and accompanying recital, these trends are analyzed through the lens of ten selected active Nashville songwriters who have seen these trends. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree …

Audiovisual Afterlives: The Soundtrack Of Liberal Nostalgia, Max W. Kaplan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Following the 2016 American Presidential election, celebrity endorsements proved to be a more narrow gauge of public opinion than ever. The symbolic alignment with popular musicians, which had long abetted the Democratic Party’s standing with youth and particular identity groups, seemed only to reaffirm the party’s establishment status, drawing disavowal in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment on both the left and right. ‘Retromania,’ a term first coined by Simon Reynolds in 2010, can be tracked conceptually from the nostalgic inclinations of twenty-first century popular culture to the ideological sphere, where nostalgic, essentialized constructions of community, identity, and progress have coalesced …

"You Can't Be Shakespeare And You Can't Be Joyce": Lou Reed, Modernism, And Mass Production, Daniel C. Jacobson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes a reevaluation of the overlooked connections between American popular music and modernist literature’s scope and formal experimentation which arose in the mid-20th century. Because Lou Reed’s ever-changing persona situates his work uncomfortably between high art and pop-culture, modernism and “post-modernity,” literature and music, and ethics and aesthetics, I intend to consider Reed as this dissertation’s empty, refracted center. One that will allow for a critique of several major intellectual movements, both inside and outside the academy, that continue to influence thinking about art, ethics, and material culture. Additionally, I hope to show that the work of a …

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

Bob Dylan And American Folk Music: The Pigeonhole Effect, Thomas J. Murray

Of Life and History

This article tracks Bob Dylan's early musical career and his relation to the American Folk music movement of the late 1950s into the early 1960s. The author grapples with the question of why Bob Dylan went electric and explores some of the stories around the seminal event in American Folk Music history. The author mainly uses Bob Dylan's personal interviews and songs to draw conclusions.

Intro To Jazz, Jon De Lucia

Open Educational Resources

OER Based Syllabus for MUS 145 Intro to Jazz course at City College. Covers the history and development of jazz along with basic music fundamental vocabulary.

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

Momentary Musics: How Spotify And The Attention Economy Transformed Music From Art Form To Affect, Tobias Hess

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The rise of music streaming platforms such as Spotify, and the concurrent emergence of what is broadly known as "the attention economy" have radically shifted the aesthetics of the music industry, as well as the artistic subjectivities of artists that operate within this paradigm. Through a formal analysis of Spotify's recommendation algorithm, I argue that algorithmic curation systems such as Spotify's create a new cultural paradigm that has replaced Adorno's conception "culture industry." What has replaced it is a dispersed meritocracy where success is determined by how well individual cultural actors conform to the preferred aesthetics of algorithmic platforms. Using …

Spirituality Countering Dehumanization: A Cypher On Asian American Hip Hop Flow, Brett J. Esaki

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

Flow—an artistic connection to the beat—is essential to the experience and cultural mix of Hip Hop. “Flow” is also a term from positive psychology that describes a special out-of-body state of consciousness, first articulated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. When Hip Hop performers get into artistic flow, they sometimes become immersed in psychological flow, and this article examines the combination for Asian American Hip Hop. Based on my national survey of Asian Americans in Hip Hop, I argue that dual flow inspires spiritual transformation and mitigates the dehumanization of social marginalization. However, the combination of terms presents problematic possibilities, given that Hip …

Aloof: Black Divas Of Refusal, Kwame K. Ocran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Aloof: Black Divas of Refusal” studies performers Lena Horne and Billie Holiday as the progenitors of a new tradition of authentic representation of Black female interiority in the entertainment arts. As interiority denotes the wide-ranging amalgamation of human expression, these divas equipped themselves with a sense of refusal and aloofness to strategically posture themselves in conditions that suited their personal predilections best and considered their status as representatives of the Black community. Lena Horne’s evolution as an aloof diva successfully saw the singer and actress escape classist thought of racial uplift to the full embracing of the totality of Black …

Using Big Data To Facilitate A Lyrical Analysis Of Poetry And Rap, Remington Yve Giller

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

Poetry and rap are dissected using text mining techniques in order to determine overall trends in the words used by both. With this data, the way in which ideas and concepts are expressed can be compared and contrasted as a way of showing the legitimacy of rap as a form of literary expression. Other topics within the paper are: a background of the history of rap and the digital humanities, and an example of a close reading featuring a medieval poem and a rap by Eminem. This demonstrates how even in a traditional way of handling texts, both poetry and …

"When I Wore A Younger Man's Clothes": The Nostalgia Topic In The Music Of Billy Joel, Kendall Waters

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

My father and I often listened to Billy Joel together as I grew up, and I eventually formed nostalgic connections to Joel’s music. While music is well known as a conductor of nostalgia, this paper explores the idea that the nostalgia I feel while listening to specific songs in Joel’s catalog is not simply a result of the indexical connections I have built with these tracks. Rather, it is a result of a “nostalgia topic” in Joel’s work. This paper compares the soundtrack and select works from Joel’s catalog to reveal that there is no one gesture, melody, or harmonic …

Japanese Popular Culture Influences In Contemporary Black American Rap And Hip-Hop, Rodrianna Gaddy

Senior Theses

Since hip-hop’s emergence in New York during the early 1970s, there has been an increasing amount of Japanese popular cultural references in Black American rap and hip-hop. This increase is made possible through globalization and innovations in communication technology. Most previous research on the trend has focused primarily on the impact hip-hop has had on Japanese culture, and how Afro-Asian collaborations have shaped music produced in the East and West. However, this thesis focuses on the influence various forms of Japanese media and history have had on contemporary Black American rap and hip-hop. I evaluate how artists can display these …

Dancing Through Time: A Biographical Look On The Evolution Of Tap Dance, Jaimie Cranford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A uniquely American art form, tap dance has often been misrepresented and under-appreciated when positioned alongside other dance forms. This is largely due to the form’s racialized history, which builds upon contributions from African-American culture. Unlike other dance forms, which stem from white European traditions, tap dance evolved out of a necessity for cultural preservation as enslaved Africans adapted to life in America. As tap dance evolved, its association with slave culture led to it not being taken seriously; if anything, tap dancers were viewed simply as “entertainers” – certainly not as artists. Using a biographical lens, this work looks …

Us, Abundantly: From Africa To The Americas, Karisma Jay

Theses and Dissertations

"Us, AbunDantly," a Live theatrical dance performance and film, delves into the African Diaspora and its influences. An artistic and academic project built upon the amplification of Black excellence and Black pride, this paper contextualizes a work within the oral histories and contemporary dance studies of a powerfully ancestral community.

“Beychella:” Beyoncé’S Homecoming To A Futuristic Queer Utopian, Jolie V. Brownell

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance and 2019 Homecoming film set the stage for a radical Black queer reimagining. Yet, how can Beyoncé—who is straight—be located within a queer critique? In this paper, I argue that through a radical and political expansion of queer, the creative deployment of dis/identification, and the unapologetic expression of the erotic, Beyoncé performs an embodiment of queer of color critique. These creative gestures within “Beychella” invite viewers into a queer futuristic utopian and provide new creative modes to politically inhabit, resist, and reimagine interlocking systems of oppression.

Keywords: Beyoncé, queer, dis/identification, erotic, QoCC, …

Real Rap, Does Authenticity Even Matter In Hip Hop?, Amin Allam

Capstone Showcase

Rap and Hip hop has evolved tremendously since its inception. The collective genre has been catapulted to global influence, where in the United States it represents the largest genre based on market share. After reviewing the history of rap music there is a perceived relationship between hip hop and authenticity. To which the question arose of whether hip hop could maintain authenticity in a commercial sphere. To explore this relationship, after reviewing the literature on authenticity, a model of analysis created by Newman and Smith was used to explore 5years worth of data dealing with the Billboard top 100 list. …

Bruce Springsteen: Evolution Of The American Dream, Anthony Muscella

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Bruce Springsteen is a man many people associate with the ideals of the “American Dream”. He comes from a poor, working-class family. He is currently an incredibly successful musician and he has been for some time now. However, he does not think this way and he has not for some time now. He has changed his opinions on the “American Dream” over time, coming from one end of the spectrum in thinking that the “American Dream” is real to the other end where he now thinks that it is a lie, and the promised land is not real.

A Guiding Force, Jessica Palmer

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

In this paper, I will be addressing the main factors which influenced Bruce Springsteen’s career and songwriting, specifically regarding interpersonal relationships the singer has had and how that is evident in his work thus far. I will be relating that concept to his latest album release, “Letter to You” by analyzing track by track and attempting to find that common thread of connection that seems to speak so well to him and his audience.

Recalling The (Afro)Future: Collective Memory And The Construction Of Subversive Meanings In Janelle Monáe’S Metropolis-Suites, Anders Liljedahl

Third Stone

Focusing on the intersection of collective memory, technology, and African American popular music, this paper use aspects of the sonic narratives in Janelle Monáe’s Metropolis-Suites I–V to introduce core concepts of Afrofuturism. The paper challenges the positioning of collective memory as being exterior to the sphere of individual cognitive memory. By inhabiting past, present, and future at once, Afrofuturism is able to critically revisit collective memory not only as a social framework but also as actual individual memory. Afrofuturist discourse questions the status of the human being by examining African Americans as always already robotic, and posits African American …

Talk This Way: A Look At The Historical Conversation Between Hip-Hop And Christianity, Joshua Swanson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Christianity and Hip-Hop culture are often said to be at odds with one another. One is said to promote a lifestyle of righteousness and love, while the other is said to promote drugs, violence, and pride. As a result, the public has portrayed these two institutions as conflicting with no willingness to resolve their perceived differences. This paper will argue that there has always been a healthy conversation between Hip-Hop and Christianity since Hip-Hop’s inception. Using sources like Hip-Hop lyrics, theologians, historians, autobiographies, sermons, and articles that range from Ma$e to Tipper Gore, this paper will look at the conversation …

Afrosonic Noise: A Transnational Black Feminist Musicological Study Of Global Black Joy In Black North American Rock Music And Afro Argentinian Music Performance., Jerika M Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I have decided that my academic mission, at this juncture at least, is to find common links between 2 groups of people that have come to know themselves through paralleling but colonially different environments. Perhaps it is wise for me to explore the similarities between Afro Argentine Black Music and African North American Music in closer ethnomusicological detail using feminist praxis—after all both communities are part of the African Diaspora and producing Black music. I do this by reconstructing a very limited genealogy of Black Femme’s and their contribution to their respective musical communities. I draw parallels between the global …