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Full-Text Articles in Musicology
Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg
Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg
Masters Theses
Standup comedy actively performs and engages with constructions of self and social identity, especially in terms of ethnic difference and the negotiation of American race relations. Musical comedy, wherein standup comedians perform song onstage, represents one facet of this expression that configures musical texts and expectations in the service of cultural observation and critique. Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts characterize two disparate approaches to the practice based on their aesthetic tastes, existential anxieties, and racial experiences. The two present their respective identities onstage in relation to a changing American political landscape of the early 21st century that has seen widespread …
"This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, And Modernity In 19th-Century Appalachian Murder Ballads, Christina Ruth Hastie
"This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, And Modernity In 19th-Century Appalachian Murder Ballads, Christina Ruth Hastie
Masters Theses
This thesis contextualizes Appalachian murder ballads of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries through a close reading of the lyric texts. Using a research frame that draws from the musicological and feminist concepts of Diana Russell, Susan McClary, Norm Cohen, and Christopher Small, I reveal 19th-century Appalachia as a patriarchal, modern, and highly codified society despite its popularized image as a culturally isolated and “backward” place. I use the ballads to demonstrate how music serves the greater cultural purpose of preserving and perpetuating social ideologies. Specifically, the murder ballads reveal layers of meaning regarding hegemonic …