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Valuing Whiteness: The Presumed Innocence of Musical Truth
No full textThe end of 2020 presents a crucial time to reflect on the challenges that lie ahead for decolonizing and disrupting musicology. While many have flocked to what I call here the “presumed innocence of musical truth” during the time of Covid-19, any move to disaggregate music from political realities—both the contexts within which it was first created, and those that have upheld the musical traditions that are now in place—carries the risk of perpetuating the destructive possibility that loving the canon can also be our alibi for (or, as I propose here, our “claim to innocence” about) why the discipline of musicology has been so slow to engage with antiracist and decolonial debates in a sustained way. Thinking critically about systemic racism at the end of a particularly challenging year, the time is ripe for interrogating how the institutional structures that uphold western art music are still tied to values about aesthetic truths that have yet to be decolonized. In this article I respond to critical race and Indigenous studies theorists Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in their renowned 2012 article “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” by outlining three “moves to innocence” that are prevalent in music academia, followed by a proposed “move to disruption” about musical value that contributes to an actively “decolonizing” musicology. Focusing on the themes of truth and value, I argue that the next decade holds an opportunity to engage with the ideas that might productively disrupt our discipline the most
There goes the Berimbau: An Africa-Brazil-Germany Musician-Body Trajectory
No full textThis article presents the partial results of a dissertation entitled The role of music in the internationalization of capoeira: Flows and crossroads Rio-France-Germany (2022). Documents prepared by practitioners of the N'Zinga Capoeira School in Hanover, Germany, published on a platform called Yumpu, provide information on how musical-cultural knowledge of capoeira is understood and passed down in this context. Through the translation of songs and the study of informational texts written by German instructors about capoeira, I observe that musicality (and, by extension, corporeality) are fundamenatal to the consolidation of capoeira culture in Germany. This analysis is influenced by Leda Martins' Performances da Oralitura (2003), which highlights the enduring African root in Afro-diasporic cultural activities, transmitting africanidades ("Africanities") beyond the performance itself. Paul Gilroy's The Black Alantic (1993) also informed my understanding of the relevance of Black culture in critiques of European democracy. German capoeira practitioners gain a deeper understanding of the structural differences imposed on racialized people when they coexist with their mestres and learn of oppression and social difference through the art of capoeira.
Rape-By-Deception in China: A Messy But Pragmatically Desirable Criminal Law
Get PDFChina’s Criminal Law defines rape to include circumstances where a perpetrator “by violence, coercion, or any other means rapes a woman.” We critically investigate whether and how this provision is applicable to the use of deception to obtain sexual intercourse, and make three contributions. First, through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of contemporaneous scholarly commentary and a systematic survey of court judgments from 2015 to 2020, we demonstrate that religious fraudulent sex, medical fraudulent sex, and impersonation of intimate partners are punished as rape in China. Second, we argue that the current Chinese law is normatively desirable vis-à-vis the general consensus among scholarly commentary and legal practices elsewhere. Third, we highlight the unique starting point of Chinese sexual offenses provisions as compared to both common law and civil law jurisdictions, and explain how this “blank slate” contributed to a legal evolution process that prioritizes attaining desired legal outcomes at the expense of neat, coherent principles. More broadly, our case study of China challenges the prevailing assumption in English-language literature that civil law jurisdictions are less receptive towards fraudulent sex criminalization. It also cautions against the practice of reviewing statutory provisions in isolation when determining the substantive law of civil law jurisdictions
Self-organization and the Process of Dynamic Learner Language Development
Get PDFAdopting Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is a testament to the revolutionary and evolutionary advancement in theory and empirical practice in the field. CDST is revolutionary for the fact that it warrants systems thinking of SLA phenomena that breaks the chain of dichotomous conceptualization on vital issues such as the mechanism of language acquisition and learning and the effectiveness of positive and negative evidence. The emergence of CDST, on the other hand, is an evolutionary product nurtured by the painstaking collaborations of SLA scholars for over two decades of scientific inquiry (see, e.g., Han, 2019; Hiver & Al-Hoorie, 2019; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008; Ortega & Han, 2017). To capitalize on CDST as a valid approach to scholarly work, it is necessary to grapple with its fundamental constructs. This forum piece accentuates a critical notion of CDST: self-organization. By first referring to the theoretical aspects of self-organization, this forum piece seeks to demonstrate the relevance of this notion in SLA. This piece will then review three sample studies homing in on learner language development with a CDST lens and a specific focus on self-organization
Writing Task Performance and First Language Background on an ESL Placement Exam: A Many-Facets Rasch Analysis of Facet Main Effects and Differential Facet Functioning
Get PDFFirst Language (L1) has been assumed to play a role in Second Language ability (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). However, the interplay between them across skill, task, or scoring criteria is more complex (Hamp-Lyons & Davies, 2008). Using Many-Facets Rasch Measurement, this study investigates the main effects of examinee ability, rater severity, task difficulty, and rubric scale difficulty and functionality on the writing section of an English as a Second Language program's placement test, then compares performance among L1 Spanish and Japanese examinees to discern the presence of bias across facet. The results for examinee ability and rater severity suggest score variability not expected by the model. Regarding task difficulty and scale difficulty and functionality, it can be concluded that an argumentative essay genre was more difficult than a customer review, or that rater assessed rubric criteria for Content, Organization, and Language more harshly for the former. A bias analysis among L1 Spanish and Japanese examinees revealed that the customer review displayed a bias against Japanese examinees, particularly for Organization, while the argumentative essay displayed bias for them, particularly for Organization and Language. These results demonstrate how placement testing could inform curricula in language programs with linguistically diverse student populations
Art, Music, & Mashups: A View from the Bench on Creativity and Copyright
Get PDFCreativity has captured human fascination for centuries. It has been said that “[t]here is little that shapes the human experience as profoundly and pervasively as creativity.” But what is creativity? Is it pure originality? Divine inspiration? Clever assimilation of existing ideas? Despite creativity’s central role in human progress, the term eludes finite definition.
To Plato, creative inspiration was divine. In contrast, Kant thought that creative geniuses were not divinely inspired but born with a particular quickness of mind that fostered brilliance and innovation. T.S. Eliot recognized the critical role of borrowing in creative work, quipping, “[i]mmature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take; and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
In psychology, a leading theory of creativity requires inspiration from existing concepts. In his “associative theory” of creativity, Sarnoff Mednick posits that most of us have predictable, stereotypical associations with a given stimulus, while the creative among us are able to retrieve remote associations. For instance, although most associate “table” with “chair,” the creative might proffer “leg” or “food.” Defining creativity as a framework of novel associations between existing concepts, Mednick distinguishes originality from creativity, finding the former of little import.
However different theorists and disciplines might define creativity, its outcomes are varied, enduring, and ever evolving. Creativity has brought us everything from Rodin’s sculptures and Van Gogh’s paintings to Newton’s scientific discoveries, from musical scores and movies to computer code.
Where, then, does the law intersect with creativity? The United States Constitution directs Congress to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Born from that critical clause is the American approach to copyright. Recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as “the engine of free expression,” copyright law enriches “the general public through access to creative works.”
To illustrate how copyright law fulfills its aims through the lens of art, music, and “mashups,” I invite you to accompany me on a short tour of copyright law’s dance with creativity by offering select examples from federal appellate decisions and a view from the bench
The EU Press Publishers’ Right Is Inapt and Off-Target
No full textLightly edited transcript of panel comments at the 2022 Symposium