1,720,977 research outputs found
Representing the Partition of 1947: Rohinton Mistry's Tales from Firozsha Baag, Such a Long Journey, and A Fine Balance as Political Allegories
No full textMy thesis argues that Rohinton Mistry’s Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), Such a Long Journey (1991), and A Fine Balance (1995), as postcolonial allegories, gauge and reconsider Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. I investigate the representations of the India-China war in 1962, the war of the liberation of Bangladesh, genocide and rape, Hindu-Muslim riots, caste violence, ultranationalism, and State of Emergency in the seventies in connection to Partition, in Mistry’s texts, to ask: Is a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multireligious India, as envisioned by the author, tenable in the face of a nuclear arms race and xenophobia? Does the hybrid identity of the Indian in Mistry teeter on the brink of post-Partition disillusionment? Despite his global readership, scholars have been relatively silent about Mistry’s interpretation of Partition. My thesis addresses this gap and re-evaluates Mistry’s fiction to critically re-position the author in the context of literary responses to Partition.2022-09-0
Outside the Empire: Improvised Music in Toronto 1960-1985
Full text linkOutside the Empire is an investigation of the improvised music community in Toronto from 1960 to 1985. Chapter One discusses how, beginning in the 1950s, the modernist sensibility of Toronto's Painters Eleven collective inspired the formation of the Artists' Jazz Band (AJB) in 1962. Chapter Two hinges upon bassist/pianist Stuart Broomer’s description of Toronto as "a mediated city," and highlights the problems of sustaining an experimental musical career in English Canada’s music and media centre. Chapter Three discusses Coda Magazine. By framing jazz as a music of innovation and of social resistance, Coda introduced a level of critical discourse that sharply distinguished the magazine and its “scene” from both the typically conservative Toronto jazz community, and the apolitically modernist scene represented by CCMC and The Music Gallery. Chapter Four discusses how the improvising group CCMC founded the Music Gallery, and in doing so reified a specifically nationalized and racialized discourse around its origins. Chapter Five relates the author's experience of learning to improvise to George Lipsitz's definition of community learning via an "alternative academy," to George E. Lewis' theory of "sociodidacticism," and to Tricia Rose's writings on "flow, layering, and rupture." Chapter Six positions the critical and musical work of Bill Smith between two different models of music history: one that treats musical development as community-based, and another that attributes innovations to a few exceptional individuals. Chapter Seven addresses women improvisers in the Toronto community's early years. The author uses Michel de Certeau's definitions of "spaces" versus "places," and "strategy" versus "tactics." Chapter Eight, the conclusion, suggests possible future areas for research into a Canadian improvising community in which the motivations of its subjects, the extent of its influence, and the history of its rich interdisciplinary infrastructure have been subject to distortion, appropriation, and erasure. Appendices include interviews with instrumentalists-composers Gayle Young and Diane Roblin, as well as an interview with the late saxophonist, and frequent AJB collaborator, Kenny Baldwin. There is also a discography of Toronto improvisation, and a list of Bill Smith Ensemble performances from the period under discussion
Improvising Toward Post-Abyssal Musics: The Difference Between Noise and Noise
Full text linkThis thesis offers a model of the musical practice of free improvisation as a “noisification” process that effects a re-listening to modern Western music and a re-considering of the “abyssal” cultural assumptions embedded therein, then asks what it means to take that model seriously. Having produced Start Making Noises Now—a film investigating freely improvised musical community in Toronto in early 2012 through performances and interviews with local improvisers—the author now reads its stories in dialogue with writings on creative music and improvisation, cultural theory, sociology, pedagogy, and rights. The resulting conversation develops an understanding of free improvisation as occupying a critical pedagogical space within the dominating culture and argues for the dissolution of barriers to participation in freely improvised musical community in solidarity with its roots in the Freedom Struggle and with ongoing “semi-audible” systemic oppressions, for the benefit of the broader culture and of creative music itself
National Postcolonial: Representations of the enemy within in Canada's national newspapers
No full textThis thesis examines current constructions of "the enemy within" in Canada's national newspapers through an analytical framework inspired by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and other theorists including Critical Whiteness scholars such as Richard Dyer. It theorizes national newspaper narratives through a counterdiscursive close reading of coverage of the "Project Thread" arrests over a three-month period in 'The Globe and Mail ' and 'The National Post'. This coverage of the "preventative detentions" of international students from Pakistan and India reveals patterns that resemble the racialized representation of bodies deemed "the enemy within" during World Wars One and Two. Through such factors as repetitions, juxtaposition, the nature of headlines, quotations, and images, and the placement and size of stories, this thesis argues, Canada's national newspapers privilege the circulation of dominant notions of "the enemy within," the axes of which are media(ted) discourses of "the Nation," "Muslims," "Immigrants," "Terrorism," and "Whiteness.
Soundin' Canaan: Music, Resistance, and Citizenship in African Canadian Poetry
No full textIdealistically, citizenship—like music—is not confined to any single space. Soundin’ Canaan (Canaan, as Canada was often referred to in spirituals during the Black migration to Canada) draws from a cross-fertilization of communicative techniques to examine how citizenship is explored by African Canadian poets’ resistive soundings. The dissertation investigates how many African Canadian poets draw from African American and pan-African musical forms (including blues, jazz, hip-hop, reggae, dub, and other improvisatory practices) in order to remap the concept of identity and citizenship within intercultural (or multicultural) spaces. I ask: what does Canadian citizenship sound like, particularly as voiced by African Canadian poets interested in a fluid citizenship that moves, like music, between local and global spaces? By looking at Canadian literature in a more global cross-cultural and interdisciplinary context and focusing, as Ajay Heble does in his article “Sounds of Change: Dissonance, History, and Cultural Listening,” on the values of dissonant histories “not in harmony” as a meaningful disturbance to knowledge production in Canada, my dissertation investigates poetic fluidity between African Canadian multimodal practices (particularly orality and music) and those of African Americans and the larger African diaspora. The Introduction outlines my methodologies, and sets the stage for the larger theoretical discussions pursued in Chapter One. Chapter Two establishes parameters for what defines a dub poem, converging around M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!. Chapter Three focuses on George Elliott Clarke’s musical dedications in Blue, Black, and Red. In Chapter Four I examine Dionne Brand’s Ossuaries, particularly the deconstructive jazz approach that Brand takes to remapping a historically marginalized, yet fluid community of resistance. Chapter Five focuses on Wayde Compton’s Performance Bond into which he incorporates hip-hop and turntable poetics. Chapter Six looks at hip-hop artist K’naan, whose song of global fraternity, “Wavin’ Flag,” was chosen as an anthem for the FIFA 2010 World Cup. The Outro (conclusion) brings the primary themes back into the mix, examining how citizenship, the self, and nationality are articulated in African Canadian poetry and literature through what I am terming “listening communities.”Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada2026-01-1
Becoming Canadian: Narrating national identity through the history of elsewhere
No full textThis thesis is an investigation of the ways in which Canadian historical fiction that deals with non-Canadian history comments on or contributes to a changing sense of Canadian national identity. Through a close examination Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter and Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey, I argue that narratives that take the history of elsewhere as subject suggest a formulation of identity that is not only multicultural, but also international, and thus challenge singular, conventional notions of what it means to be Canadian. As the nation is steeped in plurality and diversity, any formulation of identity in the Canadian context must constantly negotiate between various subjectivities. In this sense, Canada and its citizens are never fixed or absolute, but always engaged in the process of becoming Canadian
Saturn's Ark: The Improvised Archives, Politics, and Performances of Sun Ra
No full textThis dissertation examines the relationship between Black experimental performer Sun Ra (and his ensemble known as the Arkestra) and the archives of Black expressive culture. The archive, both conceptually and physically, provides a theoretical approach to understanding the cultural and social influences present in the musical performances, social practices, and politics of Ra and the Arkestra. In Chapter One, I detail how Ra’s elaborate concert spectacles known as “myth-rituals” should be understood as an act of archival preservation and intervention. Within these concerts Ra was able to maintain traditions of Black sacred and secular performance cultures that provided a performative grammar to ward off the commodification of jazz and other improvised musics within formal settings. In the second chapter, I shift my attention towards Ra and the Arkestra’s clothing and fashion. I argue that these sartorial choices may be seen as an “alternative archive.” The materiality and style of Ra and the Arkestra’s clothing function as an archival repository that captures the heterogeneity of, and often competing, discourses around Black visual and embodied identity politics of early 1970s America. Moreover, I suggest that Ra and the Arkestra’s dress is in dialogue with Black diasporic traditions of dandyism and tricksterism. The final chapter shifts towards the historical moment of the Space Race. In this chapter I suggest that Ra’s sounds, words, and visual identity from the years 1969-1972 must be seen as part of a wider movement of Black diasporic cultural actors whose works form what I call the Black counter-archive of the Space Race. I contend that Ra and his contemporaries produced cultural artefacts that can be positioned as part of an archival repository that critiques the mainly American and wholly white archive of human-powered space travel and exploration. In my conclusion, I examine how Ra’s persona and his performance practices (in tandem with the Arkestra) confound conventional approaches to archives and archiving. This discussion is followed by a brief coda where I explore the ways in which the practice of engaging in archival research might itself be seen as an improvisatory act
Singing the Self: Improvisational Pedagogy in Community Choir
Full text linkVoice is often regarded as a metaphor for agency within modern culture. Far-reaching implications of this metaphor can be understood by examining literal examples of vocal agency in self-advocacy scenarios. Singing, particularly improvisational singing, can represent freedom, agility and testimony. Yet there is a discrepancy between the experience of facilitating singing and being invited to sing. While the invitation to sing is usually extended in joy and with compassion, the same invitation can be received with fear, refusal and silence. In learning environments, power dynamics and evaluative imperatives can exaggerate this discrepancy. Vocal instructors are regularly placed at the apex between artistic empowerment and traumatic encounters. Liberatory experiences are arrived at through careful and sensitive instructions. Teachers invested in facilitating students towards agency must be aware of these power dynamics to mitigate exploitation and maximize liberatory potentialities. This study interviews three participants; Christine Duncan, Phil Minton, and Chris Tonelli to examine best practices and positive outcomes in their work as performers and facilitators of community choirs using extended vocal improvisation. The first chapter reviews personal experiences with vocal improvisation. The second chapter focuses on collaborative processes. The third chapter examines the role of public presentation and its influence on positive outcomes for participants in soundsinging choirs.University of Guelp
The Evolution of Telematic Musicking During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Examination of Critical Practices within a Synchronous Online Jazz Improvisation Program for Older Adults
Full text linkWhat are the rules of engagement, within the online environment, for a music making experience? Do the rules change as the lines between online and in-person become blurred because the technology is not “getting in the way?” What if your living situation is such that engagement in a musicking experience is not possible without access through the internet? It is a widely held belief that engagement in the arts has a positive impact on our overall health and well-being. My practice-led PhD research examines critical practices of telematic musicking as a method of providing a jazz improvisation experience for older adults. I have developed pedagogical and technological considerations specific to an older demographic that also apply across generations and various genres of music making. While the intention is to increase access to meaningful musical experiences that have a positive impact on older adults’ health and well-being, the research outcomes apply to any population that has access to musical instruments, the necessary hardware, and a reliable internet connection. The participants of my research were all members of the New Horizons International Music Association (NHIMA). NHIMA offers a place for adults to learn, expand, and explore musical instruments, styles, and genres with like-minded people in both their own local community and the NHIMA virtual community. The software used during the research, to achieve a low-latency audio connection, was Jamulus. I developed telematic musicking programs as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting inaccessibility to in-person music programs. These programs are not intended to replace in-person musical activities and should be approached as a new and distinct experience. This thesis offers a pathway for further access to engagement in the arts through telematics, increasing the potential positive impact these experiences have on our overall health and well-being
Literature and Social Change: Writing, Criticism and Teaching in Neoliberal Canada
No full textThis dissertation examines literary activism that opposes neoliberalism in Canada. I define literary activism as the use of creative writing by its authors and critics and those who teach it to think through, resist, imagine alternatives to, and build movements against hegemonic power. What is at stake in this study is whether writers, critics, and teachers will have further insight into some of the ways that language is not only affective but also effective in its opposition to neoliberalism. I attempt to make that contribution by locating literary activism in the spheres of literary authorship and reception, and by considering how writers, critics, and teachers have sought to foster resistance to transnational neoliberalism. Chapter 1, “Writing as Activism,” takes up these issues by examining Stephen Law’s novel Tailings of Warren Peace as a political intervention. The chapter examines the actual and possible political effects of works of creative writing through close readings and through a look at this book’s production and circulation. The second chapter, “Criticism as Activism,” looks at instances of neoliberal era Canadian literary criticism that function as counter-hegemonic intellectual activism. I approach this issue by discussing the methods of interpretation that Canadian literary critics have used to make criticism politically effective and by examining the ways that critics have sought to bring their work to a broader public than academic publications typically reach. Chapter 3 of this dissertation, “Teaching as Activism,” considers the ways leftist English teachers connect classrooms to the larger world and takes as a case study Shyam Selvadurai’s novel Funny Boy. My findings are that literary activism in the neoliberal period has been characterized by intellectuals articulating a systemic critique of capitalism, providing conceptual tools that activists can make use of, and stimulating the public’s radical imagination
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