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)

Spam prevention powered by Akismet