Birds And Women In Music Art And Politics

This volume depicts the struggle of birds for freedom, an endeavour similarly experienced by women in the United States and other regions of the globe. It is a prolific study of how creatures interact psychosocially. Sometimes, birds inspire humanity, and, at other times, humans desecrate birds. They may interweave seamlessly or may experience indirect and direct conflicts. Their needs overlap and may be satisfied and explored compassionately through analytical lenses, including those of feminism, anthropomorphism, and animal rights. They share platforms, including art, the male gaze, and discussions about capture and oppression. In this work, both are presented as equally adept to survival on Earth. In this capacity, the book is novel and fresh. In spite of contradictions, such as preserving some birds at zoos, while causing others to fight for sport, birds, overall, will continue to cause humans to thrive, develop, and take-off; and by experiencing their lives through this book, humans who share the birds’ spiritual and spatial realms will develop a keener sense of environmental care and how to make cruelty-free choices. This book’s range is profound, and includes original research on diverse areas depicting Martin Luther King, Big Bird, the presidents, celebrities, and other notable sources of leadership. It also considers influential zoos and several preservation sites. In all, it is a well-founded work that demonstrates care in research and argument.

Over the first half of the nineteenth century, writers like Austen and Brontë confined their critiques to satirical portrayals of women musicians. Later, however, a marked shift occurred with the introduction of musical female characters where were positively to be feared. First published in 2000, this book examines the reasons for this shift in representations of female musicians in Victorian fiction from 1860-1900. Focusing on changing gender roles, musical practices and the framing of both of these scientific discourses, the book explores how fictional notions of female musicians diverged from actual trends in music making. This book will be of interest to those studying nineteenth century literature and music.

In The Political Force of Musical Beauty, Barry Shank shows how musical acts and performances generate their own aesthetic and political force, creating, however fleetingly, a shared sense of the world among otherwise diverse listeners. Rather than focusing on the ways in which music enables the circulation of political messages, he argues that communities grounded in the act and experience of listening can give rise to new political ideas and expression. Analyzing a wide range of "beautiful music" within popular and avant-garde genres—including the Japanese traditions in the music of Takemitsu Toru and Yoko Ono, the drone of the Velvet Underground, and the insistence of hardcore punk and Riot grrrl post-punk—Shank finds that when it fulfills the promise of combining sonic and lyrical differences into a cohesive whole, musical beauty has the power to reorganize the basis of social relations and produce communities that recognize meaningful difference.