Parents, children and the porous boundaries of the sexual family in law and popular culture

This article focuses on a perceived ideological overlap between popular cultural and judicial treatments of sex and conjugality that contributes to a discursive construction of parenthood and parenting. The author perceives that in both legal and popular cultural texts, there is a sense in which notions of ‘natural’ childhood are discursively constituted as being put at risk by those who reproduce outside of dominant sexual norms, and that signs of normative sexuality (typically in the form of heterosexual coupling) may be treated as a sign of safety. These ideas are rooted in ancient associations between fertility, sexuality and femininity that can also be traced in the historical development of the English language. With the help of commentators such as Martha Fineman, the article situates parents and children within a discourse of family which prioritises conjugality, with consequences for the ways in which the internal and external boundaries of families are delineated

Popular Music and Politics:In, Against and Beyond Identity

The research establishes radical modes of theorising for an explicitly anti-capitalist musicology able to celebrate music’s enactment of post-capitalist desire and to understand how music helps to ‘make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable’. Adopting a sharp focus on the 1960s to the 1990s this thesis combines popular musicology and autonomist Marxism to argue that music functions as politics in transforming consciousness and shifting domains of acceptability in thought and feeling. Emancipatory politics must destroy the appearance of a ‘natural’ order and the thesis develops perspectives on ‘popular music and politics’ that can account for past struggles against capitalism, demonstrating how and why these struggles are naturalised with the discontinuity they signify necessarily erased or appropriated. Music performs emotional work of political significance such as in the embodiment of hope and confidence necessary for political mobilisation. The capacities of music to articulate the emotions that empower people are deployed here to suggest contradictions contained in, against and beyond identity bear utopian orientation. This statement is developed to ask what it means to counter hegemony and break social cohesion.‘Insubordination’ forms the macro-arguments of the research. These arguments are around the roles of politics in popular music experience in the translation of mid-twentieth century revolution to capitalist realism and neoliberal modernity. Flows of rebellion are drawn out carefully in discussions of non-subordination, listening and identity. Hidden structures of rationality undermine the power of the imagination and therefore hinder possibilities for enacting non-capitalist futures. The research takes its cue from new trends which are cultivating different habits of thinking for post-capitalist politics and defining political action. It sets frames for the subversive potential of music as affording liberatory experience. Many of the concepts and ideas, such as psychedelic consciousness and punk performativity, used to discuss artists from Jimi Hendrix, to Patti Smith and John Cage (Destiny’s Child, Pussy Riot and Tupac) do not have recourse to assured theoretical principles. The reader should expect to access the work of a wide range of authors, not least Mark Fishe

Railways & Music

When the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825, it was the first steam-powered railway to carry passengers. Since then there has been no shortage of music connected with trains and railways: orchestral pieces and popular songs describing railway journeys; those that celebrate the opening of a new line; worksongs and blues describing the hardship of building the railroads, even the first use of sampled music used railway sounds as its source. The railway has inspired countless pieces of music from the pastoral serenity of the Flanders and Swann song ‘Slow train’ to the shrieking horror of holocaust trains in Steve Reich’s Different Trains. This is the first book to give a comprehensive coverage of music connected with the railways. In the nineteenth century, thousands of miles of railway lines transformed time, space and distance. Across Europe composers celebrated with music such as waltzes and polkas, cantatas, piano pieces and saucy music hall songs. Moving into the twentieth century, iconic twentieth-century works, such as Britten’s Night Mail and Honegger’s Pacific 231, captured the sounds of locomotives. Railways and trains are so deeply ingrained in the popular imagination that they feature in hundreds, possibly thousands, of popular songs. In North America, early railroad songs told of hoboes, heroes, villains, and train wrecks and the sounds of the railroad were heard in boogie-woogie, blues, gospel, jazz, and rock music. In total, this book describes over 50 pieces of classical music and covers more than 250 popular songs

Exploring posthuman subjectivities: a case study of LGBTQ Asian and Pacific American identified activists

This research has explored the intersection between the subject, activism, and posthuman theory, setting out to investigate whether posthuman theoretical understandings can be applied to contemporaneous subjects. Using NVivo software, a qualitative data analysis is conducted into 17 autobiographical texts taken from the anthology Restoried Selves (Kumashiro 2011). This analysis finds that these subjects do not seem to explicitly understand themselves in posthuman terms, and indeed in many cases replicate humanist understandings of the self, but that in some ways, a posthuman framing can implicitly be attributed to these subjects and their activism

Maths & Music

There are strong links between music and mathematics dating back to Pythagoras and beyond. This book draws together the two disciplines outlining the key methods and concepts that underpin the subjects from one of the earliest uses of a musical cryptogram to computer music in the twenty-first century. Maths and Music is divided into sections, each one exploring a different mathematical aspect of music: rhythm; symmetry; scales; form and structure; and finally some musical curiosities. Musical examples are taken from across the world, from ancient and medieval music through to popular music of the twenty-first century. In all, the book covers over 200 pieces of music ranging from classical symphonies to electronic dance music with numerous musical excerpts given. There are clear explanations throughout along with glossaries of musical and mathematical terms

Railways & Music

When the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825, it was the first steam-powered railway to carry passengers. Since then there has been no shortage of music connected with trains and railways: orchestral pieces and popular songs describing railway journeys; those that celebrate the opening of a new line; worksongs and blues describing the hardship of building the railroads, even the first use of sampled music used railway sounds as its source. The railway has inspired countless pieces of music from the pastoral serenity of the Flanders and Swann song ‘Slow train’ to the shrieking horror of holocaust trains in Steve Reich’s Different Trains. This is the first book to give a comprehensive coverage of music connected with the railways. In the nineteenth century, thousands of miles of railway lines transformed time, space and distance. Across Europe composers celebrated with music such as waltzes and polkas, cantatas, piano pieces and saucy music hall songs. Moving into the twentieth century, iconic twentieth-century works, such as Britten’s Night Mail and Honegger’s Pacific 231, captured the sounds of locomotives. Railways and trains are so deeply ingrained in the popular imagination that they feature in hundreds, possibly thousands, of popular songs. In North America, early railroad songs told of hoboes, heroes, villains, and train wrecks and the sounds of the railroad were heard in boogie-woogie, blues, gospel, jazz, and rock music. In total, this book describes over 50 pieces of classical music and covers more than 250 popular songs

Hooked on Classics: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 25 years on

This chapter sets out to to reassess the critical reception of Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 25 years after its initial publication. It argues that the text operates on many different levels, circulating as a much loved comic novel of growing up, as teaching material, as an aspect of popular/literary culture, and as part of Winterson’s own mythobiography. Its success may be attributed to the ways in which the narrative ‘hooks’ itself onto classic texts, which circulate in the culture’s collective unconscious. This chapter will combine these emphases and consider the novel as a literary classic that both subverts the canon and inscribes the tradition in the process of reworking autobiography as art. It will draw on recent interviews with Winterson to suggest that the novel represents a ‘cover story’ that conceals the sense of loss intrinsic to Winterson’s origin story

Exploring psychosocial and therapeutic needs among refugees and asylum-seekers

Part one of this thesis explored the impact of gender on the post-migration experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers. A narrative review was conducted, which examined the findings of existing research in relation to theory and policy. The review identified key areas in which gender appears to interact with other variables that affect psychosocial wellbeing following migration: Integration, employment and social status; The changing nature of gender roles within the home; and Gender roles, culture and domestic violence. The findings demonstrate that gender is an important factor in how refugee and asylum-seeking men and women navigate changes post-migration. Part two focuses on the therapeutic needs of refugees and asylum-seekers who have experienced torture. Specialist therapists were interviewed about their experience of working holistically with this client group. Four themes were developed from the analysis: Therapy versus therapeutic: Addressing complex needs; The role of the therapist: Reparenting and bearing witness; “Trauma” and the meaning of recovery; and When it is safe and necessary to end? The implications of the findings for clinical psychologists in statutory services are discussed. Part three is a critical appraisal of the research process itself, focusing in particular upon the iterative nature of qualitative research and considerations regarding conducting research in collaboration with a third-sector organisation