Teaching Interests
Current Projects
The diaspora of seasonal music and custom from England to Canada
Buddhist music and Buddhology in Asia and the West
Ethnofusion and acculturation in World Music
Misrule and transgression as a determinate of musical style and activity
Brass bands as competitive sport and amateur passion in Canada and England
The fiddle and its place in Canada’s sonic and historical landscape
Late ‘60s psychedelic music in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver, BC
Kwakwala (Kwakiutl) language and its relation to music forms
Polymetre in First Nations music
Theorizing Performativity in the reception of western popular and art music
Theories of Performance in musical folklore
Performativity (Richard Schechner)
Role-playing (Erving Goffman)
Ethnomimesis and Re-enactment (Robert Cantwell)
The Invention of Tradition (Eric Hobsbawm)
Cultural Tourism (Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblet)
Authenticity (Handler and Linnekin)
Transformations and Evolutions (Neil Rosenberg)
Theories of Festival and Musical Transgression
Liminality (Victor Turner)
Transgression (Allon White)
Parody and irony (Linda Hutcheon)
Homo Ludens (Johan Huizinga)
Ritual behaviour (Sarah Pike)
Theories of Reception and Perception
Simulacrum (Jean Baudrillard)
Differance (Jacques Derrida)
Semiotics (Charles Peirce)
Cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu)
Mediocrity and Exemplarity in Amateur music-making
The Art of the Average (Paul Fleming)
Serious Leisure (Robert Stebbins)
Musicking (Christopher Small)
Neo-colonialism and First Nations Music
Power relationships (Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon)
Protocols and permissions (Linda Tuhiwai Smith)
Thick and Thin description (Clifford Geertz)
High and low context (Edward Hall)
Reflexivity (James Clifford)
First Nations resistance discourse (Gerald Taiaiake Alfred)
Deep Listening
Music in the Moment (Jerrold Levinson)
Trance (Gilbert Rouget, Judith Becker)
Spiritualism (Marcel Cobussen)
Existentialism
Popular Music and Identity
Postmodern feminism
Wiggers and White Studies
Karaoke and kitsch
Music and Place (Andy Bennett)
Subcultures (David Hesmondhalgh)
Canada and Multiculturalism
Cultural Studies (Stuart Hall)
Multiculturalism without Culture (Anne Phillips)
Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO)
Beyond (Musical) Exoticism (Timothy Taylor)
Choreology
Cultural Theory (Helen Thomas)
Anthropology (Judith Hanna)
Semiotics (Drid Williams)
Choreographic politics (Anthony Shay)
Modes of Inquiry (Susan Foster, Janet Adshead)