Dr Vanessa Knights's Books

We are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

By: Dr Ken McLeod

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

We are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

By: Dr Ken McLeod

Sports and popular music are synergistic agents in the construction of identity and community. They are often interconnected through common cross-marketing tactics and through influence on each other's performative strategies and stylistic content. Typically only studied as separate entities, popular music and sport cultures mutually 'play' off each other in exchanges of style, ideologies and forms. Posing unique challenges to notions of mind - body dualities, nationalism, class, gender, and racial codes and sexual orientation, Dr Ken McLeod illuminates the paradoxical and often conflicting relationships associated with these modes of leisure and entertainment and demonstrates that they are not culturally or ideologically distinct but are interconnected modes of contemporary social practice. Examples include how music is used to enhance sporting events, such as anthems, chants/cheers, and intermission entertainment, music that is used as an active part of the athletic event, and music that has been written about or that is associated with sports. There are also connections in the use of music in sports movies, television and video games and important, though critically under-acknowledged, similarities regarding spectatorship, practice and performance. Despite the scope of such confluences, the extraordinary impact of the interrelationship of music and sports on popular culture has remained little recognized. McLeod ties together several influential threads of popular culture and fills a significant void in our understanding of the construction and communication of identity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

280

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409494500

ISBN 13

9781409494508

Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History

The Austro-German Tradition from Hegel to Freud

By: Dr Ian Biddle

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History

The Austro-German Tradition from Hegel to Freud

By: Dr Ian Biddle

What does it mean to think of Western Art music - and the Austro-German contribution to that repertory - as a tradition? How are men and masculinities implicated in the shaping of that tradition? And how is the writing of the history (or histories) of that tradition shaped by men and masculinities? This book seeks to answer these and other questions by drawing both on a wide range of German-language writings on music, sound and listening from the so-called long nineteenth century (circa 1800-1918), and a range of critical-theoretical texts from the post-war continental philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions, including Lacan, Žižek, Serres, Derrida and Kittler. The book is focussed in particular on bringing the object of historical writing itself into scrutiny by engaging in what Žižek has called a 'historicity' or a way of writing about the past that not merely acknowledges the ahistorical kernel of historical writing, but brings that kernel into the light of day, takes account of it and puts it into play. The book is thus committed to a kind of historical writing that is open-ended - though not ideologically naïve - and that does not fix or stabilize the nature of the relationship between so-called 'primary' and 'secondary' texts. The book consists of an introduction, which places the study of classical music and the Austro-German tradition within broader debates about the value of that tradition, and four extensive case studies: an analysis of the cultural-historical category of listening around 1800; a close reading of A. B. Marx's Beethoven monograph of 1859; a consideration of Heinrich Schenker's attitudes to the mob and the vernacular more broadly and an examination, through Franz Kafka, of the figure of Mahler's body.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

254

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409494683

ISBN 13

9781409494683

Sounds of the Borderland

Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia since 1991

By: Dr Catherine Baker

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Sounds of the Borderland

Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia since 1991

By: Dr Catherine Baker

Sounds of the Borderland is the first book-length study of how popular music became a medium for political communication and contested identification during and after Croatia's war of independence from Yugoslavia. It extends existing cultural studies literature on music, politics and the state, which has largely been grounded in Western European and North American political systems. It also responds to an emerging fascination with the culture and politics of contemporary south-east Europe, expanding scholarship on the post-Yugoslav conflicts by going on to encompass significant social and political changes into the present day. The outbreak of war in 1991 saw almost every professional musician in Croatia take part in a wave of patriotic music-making and the powerful state television system strive to bring popular music under its control. As the political imperative shifted from securing national survival to consolidating a homogenous nation-state, the music industry responded with several strategies for creating a national popular music, producing messages about the nation and, in the ongoing debates over the origins of the folk music that inspired many songs, a way to define the nation by expressing what Croatia was not. The war on ethnic ambiguity which cut through individuals' social and creative lives played out across the airwaves, sales racks and gossip columns of a small country that imagined itself a historical and cultural borderland. These explicit and implicit narratives of nationhood connect many political phases: the months of fiercest fighting, the stabilised front, the uneasy post-war years when the symbolic frontline region of eastern Slavonia had still not returned to Croatian sovereignty, the euphoria and instability after the end of the Tudjman regime in 2000, and Croatia's fraught journey towards the European Union. Baker's book provides valuable insight into the role of music in a wartime and post-conflict society and will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in south-east Europe or the transformation of entertainment during and after conflict.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

284

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409494039

ISBN 13

9781409494034

Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

By: Dr Moshe Morad

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

By: Dr Moshe Morad

The ‘Special Period’ in Cuba was an extended era of economic depression starting in the early 1990s, characterized by the collapse of revolutionary values and social norms, and a way of life conducted by improvised solutions for survival, including hustling and sex-work. During this time there developed a thriving, though constantly harassed and destabilized, clandestine gay scene (known as the ‘ambiente’). In the course of eight visits between 1995 and 2007, the last dozen years of Fidel Castro’s reign, Moshe Morad became absorbed in Havana’s gay scene, where he created a wide social network, attended numerous secret gatherings-from clandestine parties to religious rituals-and observed patterns of behavior and communication. He discovered the role of music in this scene as a marker of identity, a source of queer codifications and identifications, a medium of interaction, an outlet for emotion and a way to escape from a reality of scarcity, oppression and despair. Morad identified and conducted his research in different types of ‘musical space,’ from illegal clandestine parties held in changing locations, to ballet halls, drag-show bars, private living-rooms and kitchens and santería religious ceremonies. In this important study, the first on the subject, he argues that music plays a central role in providing the physical, emotional, and conceptual spaces which constitute this scene and in the formation of a new hybrid ‘gay identity’ in Special-Period Cuba.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

313

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472448197

ISBN 13

9781472448194

Protest Music in France

Production, Identity and Audiences

By: Dr Barbara Lebrun

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Protest Music in France

Production, Identity and Audiences

By: Dr Barbara Lebrun

Barbara Lebrun traces the evolution of 'protest' music in France since 1981, exploring the contradictions that emerge when artists who take their musical production and political commitment 'seriously', cross over to the mainstream, becoming profitable and consensual. Contestation is understood as a discourse shaped by the assumptions and practices of artists, producers, the media and audiences, for whom it makes sense to reject politically reactionary ideas and the dominant taste for commercial pop. Placing music in its economic, historical and ideological context, however, reveals the fragility and instability of these oppositions. The book firstly concentrates on music production in France, the relationships between independent labels, major companies and the state's cultural policies. This section provides the material background for understanding the development of rock alternatif, France's self-styled 'subversive' genre of the 1980s, and explains the specificity of a 'protest' music culture in late-twentieth-century France, in relation to the genre's tradition in the West. The second part looks at representations of a 'protest' identity in relation to discourses of national identity, focusing on two 1990s sub-genres. The first, chanson néo-réaliste, contests modernity through the use of acoustic instruments, but its nostalgic 'protest' raises questions about the artists' real engagement with the present. The second, rock métis, borrows from North African and Latino rhythms and challenges the 'neutral' Frenchness of the Republic, while advocating multiculturalism in problematic ways. A discussion of Manu Chao's career, a French artist who has achieved success abroad, also allows an exploration of the relationship between transnationalism and anti-globalization politics. Finally, the book examines the audiences of French 'protest' music and considers festivals as places of 'non-mainstream' identity negotiation. Based on first-hand interviews, this section highlights the vocabulary of emotions that audiences use to make sense of an 'alternative' performance, unveiling the contradictions that underpin their self-definition as participants in a 'protest' culture. The book contributes to debates on the cultural production of 'resistance' and the representation of post-colonial identities, uncovering the social constructedness of the discourse of 'protest' in France. It pays attention to its nation-specific character while offering a wider reflection on the fluidity of 'subversive' identities, with potential applications across a range of Western music practices.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

216

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140949389X

ISBN 13

9781409493891

Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia

By: Dr Uroš Čvoro

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia

By: Dr Uroš Čvoro

Turbo-folk music is the most controversial form of popular culture in the new states of former Yugoslavia. Theoretically ambitious and innovative, this book is a new account of popular music that has been at the centre of national, political and cultural debates for over two decades. Beginning with 1970s Socialist Yugoslavia, Uroš Čvoro explores the cultural and political paradoxes of turbo-folk: described as ‘backward’ music, whose misogynist and Serb nationalist iconography represents a threat to cosmopolitanism, turbo-folk’s iconography is also perceived as a ‘genuinely Balkan’ form of resistance to the threat of neo-liberalism. Taking as its starting point turbo-folk’s popularity across national borders, Čvoro analyses key songs and performers in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. The book also examines the effects of turbo on the broader cultural sphere - including art, film, sculpture and architecture - twenty years after its inception and popularization. What is proposed is a new way of reading the relationship of contemporary popular music to processes of cultural, political and social change - and a new understanding of how fundamental turbo-folk is to the recent history of former Yugoslavia and its successor states.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

225

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472420381

ISBN 13

9781472420381

Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa

By: Dr Matt Gillan

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa

By: Dr Matt Gillan

Since the early 1990s, Okinawan music has experienced an extraordinary boom in popularity throughout Japan. Musicians from this island prefecture in the very south of Japan have found success as performers and recording artists, and have been featured in a number of hit films and television dramas. In particular, the Yaeyama region in the south of Okinawa has long been known as a region rich in performing arts, and Yaeyaman musicians such as BEGIN, Daiku Tetsuhiro, and Natsukawa Rimi have been at the forefront of the recent Okinawan music boom. This popularity of Okinawan music represents only the surface of a diverse and thriving musical culture within modern-day Yaeyama. Traditional music continues to be an important component of traditional ritual and social life in the islands, while Yaeyama's unique geographical and cultural position at the very edge of Japan have produced varied discourses surrounding issues such as tradition versus modernity, preservation, and cultural identity. Songs from the Edge of Japan explores some of the reasons for the high profile of Yaeyaman music in recent years, both inside and outside Yaeyama. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out since 2000, the book uses interviews, articles from the popular media, musical and lyrical analysis of field and commercial recordings, as well as the author's experiences as a performer of Yaeyaman and Okinawan music, to paint a picture of what it means to perform Yaeyaman music in the 21st century.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

246

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409495159

ISBN 13

9781409495154

Cutting Your Losses from a Bad or Toxic Relationship

By: Dr. J.A. McGruder Ph.D. CRC

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Cutting Your Losses from a Bad or Toxic Relationship

By: Dr. J.A. McGruder Ph.D. CRC

Life itself can be like riding a roller coaster. It’s full of ups and downs, high and low points. Using the lyrics of an old gospel song by Linda Ronstadt, “Life is like a mountain railway with an engineer that’s brave. We must make this run successful from the cradle to the grave,” one of the greatest challenges we all face to navigate life’s journey is developing healthy, godly relationships. One of our greatest failures in developing healthy relationships is well described by a story sharer in this book. She compares a bad or toxic relationship with the plight of sin. “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.” Such can be said about a bad or toxic relationship. In Dr. McGruder’s book Cutting Your Losses from a Bad or Toxic Relationship, he warns those who discover themselves in such a relationship and fail to heed warnings and escape from harm’s way. Remaining in such a relationship can waste a significant portion of your life’s journey, and the result can tally up to emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual gross costs. However, this book will provide insight on how to survive and thrive it all!

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

Xlibris Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

1984557459

ISBN 13

9781984557452

Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead

Science, Politics and Intuition in Executive Selection

By: Dr Douglas Board

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead

Science, Politics and Intuition in Executive Selection

By: Dr Douglas Board

Some of the worst selection practices to be found anywhere can be found at the top of organisations. Even when senior selection is not egregiously bad, rarely is it as good as it could be. Front-line staff and middle managers are selected with much more rigour today than 30 years ago - but not the chairmen, chief executives and chief officers who lead them. So says Douglas Board in Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead. Dr Board draws on his extensive experience in executive search and in leadership, coupled with his own academic research embracing the sociology and psychology of scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Weick to offer ground-breaking insight into the value and limitations of established selection practice. This book illuminates ways in which senior roles differ from other positions and will help those charged with selecting individuals for senior positions, as well as potential candidates, those concerned with regulating selection policy, and researchers. Examining the classic mix of competency frameworks and selection tools such as psychological and skills assessments, simulations, reference-checking and interviews, the author concludes that senior selection choices are holding back organisations and individual careers, with implications for diversity, effectiveness, and social justice. He contends that while complacent, self-regarding elites will always need vigilant challenge, the scientific approach to selection has weaknesses as well as strengths. Those weaknesses become more pronounced at senior levels, posing particular questions about, amongst other things, the role of intuition and politics.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

427

Publisher

Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409487016

ISBN 13

9781409487012

Secrets of Numerology

By: Dr. Dawne Kovan

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Secrets of Numerology

By: Dr. Dawne Kovan

Secrets of Numerology is the complete beginner's introduction to the world of numerology, its origins, history, theory and step-by-step instructions on how to put it into practice. Part of the Secrets of series, this book explores the secrets behind numerology, including: The history of numerology The meanings behind each number Instructions on calculating your personality and destiny numbers Analysis of relationship compatibility . . . and much more For thousands of years people have been aware of the significance of numbers. The early Greeks taught that numbers are central to the understanding of life itself, while Galileo, the medieval Italian astronomer, said, “The book of nature is written in mathematical language”. Through numerology, we take part in their rhythmic process, one that links us with universal purpose and meaning. Written by an expert in the field, this book includes clear and simple instructions on creating your own name chart, analysis on the traits of each number, and advice on how to make predictions to take control of your life. If you like this, you might also be interested in Secrets of Colour Healing . . .

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

227

Publisher

Ivy Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1782405739

ISBN 13

9781782405733

Developing Government Policy Capability

Policy Work, Project Management, and Knowledge Practices

By: Dr. Chivonne Algeo,Dr. James Connor,Henry Linger,Dr. Vanessa McDermott,Dr. Jill Owen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Developing Government Policy Capability

Policy Work, Project Management, and Knowledge Practices

By: Dr. Chivonne Algeo,Dr. James Connor,Henry Linger,Dr. Vanessa McDermott,Dr. Jill Owen

The creation of public and government policy presents a "wicked" problem because it tends to be highly contested, involves many different stakeholders, and yields outcomes that change and evolve over time. Developing Government Policy Capability examines the role project management plays in supporting how policy work is conducted. Using Australia's controversial Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 as a case study, the authors explore the question: Can project management practices contribute to improving government policy development and implementation capability? Their argument—that project management can solve even "wicked" problems—is not necessarily new. As they explain, that's pretty much what project management is all about. Project managers need to clearly articulate, acknowledge, and legitimize invisible work—the bridge between what is being done and what is supposed to be done. The project management tool set and the importance of recognizing the societal dimension when planning and conducting projects can make it possible for practitioners to tackle even the most complex policy work.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

232

Publisher

Project Management Institute

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628251808

ISBN 13

9781628251807

Divinely Touched: Transform Your Life

By: Dr. Dave DiSano,Mary DiSano

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Divinely Touched: Transform Your Life

By: Dr. Dave DiSano,Mary DiSano

Divinely Touched is a story of personal transformation. It chronicles Marys spiritual awakening, how she was divinely saved, led, and transformed. From the depths of depression, from battles with physical ailments for which the medical profession had no explanations, from being led into worlds she never knew existed, she survived being taken to the underworld. She was guided and healed by light workers, shamans, and avatars from this world and the spirit dimension and led on a journey of personal, physical, mental, and spiritual healing. Marys experience, like that of a caterpillar when transformed into a beautiful butterfly, is one that will inspire, enlighten, and transform your life as well. Dr. Dave uses science, research, and knowledge of the ages to explain what Mary experienced and open worlds to the reader that they may never have imagined. Divinely Touched: Transform Your Life can, in fact, do just that. With painstaking detail, Mary describes her descent into darkness and her triumphant return. Like Margaret Starbird, in The Goddess in the Gospels, who also has a spiritual awakening that took her into the realms of psychosis, Mary describes a similar personal descent into darkness before bursting forth into spiritual awareness. Inside you will find a compelling story that may help you or someone you love. Maureen St. Germain, author of Beyond the Flower of Life & You Are the Genie in the Bottle The world is waiting for this powerful story of good vs. evil. Marys story is amazing, compelling, eye-opening, and courageous. Her faith has carried her through the darkness into the light. She is Gods instrument and truly a living expression of divine light flowing forth into the world. Divinely Touched is a must-read, and you wont want to put it down. It will blow your mind! Pat Hastings, Author of Simply a Woman of Faith: How to Live in Spiritual Power and Transform Your Life Marys amazing story will capture your interest and touch your heart. You will be inspired to move forward on your own journey of awakening. Andrew Oser, author of How Alternation Can Change Your Life; Finding the Rhythms of Health and Happiness Divinely Touched is a wonderful book that documents an impassioned and heartfelt account of the pitfalls and triumphs of personal awakening. Dr. Michael Sharp, author of The Great Awakening, The Book of Light, The Book of Love, The Dossier of Ascension

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

384

Publisher

BalboaPress

Published Date

ISBN 10

1452537461

ISBN 13

9781452537467

Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels

By: Dr Laurence Talairach-Vielmas

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels

By: Dr Laurence Talairach-Vielmas

Laurence Talairach-Vielmas explores Victorian representations of femininity in narratives that depart from mainstream realism, from fairy tales by George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, Juliana Horatia Ewing, and Jean Ingelow, to sensation novels by Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and Charles Dickens. Feminine representation, Talairach-Vielmas argues, is actually presented in a hyper-realistic way in such anti-realistic genres as children's literature and sensation fiction. In fact, it is precisely the clash between fantasy and reality that enables the narratives to interrogate the real and re-create a new type of realism that exposes the normative constraints imposed to contain the female body. In her exploration of the female body and its representations, Talairach-Vielmas examines how Victorian fantasies and sensation novels deconstruct and reconstruct femininity; she focuses in particular on the links between the female characters and consumerism, and shows how these serve to illuminate the tensions underlying the representation of the Victorian ideal.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

212

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409489825

ISBN 13

9781409489825

The Hidden Cinema

British Film Censorship in Action 1913-1972

By: Dr James C Robertson,James Robertson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Hidden Cinema

British Film Censorship in Action 1913-1972

By: Dr James C Robertson,James Robertson

How does film censorship work in Britain? Robertson examines the history of the British Board of Film Censors and shows that censorship has had a greater influence on film history than is often assumed.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

212

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1134876726

ISBN 13

9781134876723

Book's by Dr Vanessa Knights

We are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

We are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music

Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History

Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History

Sounds of the Borderland

Sounds of the Borderland

Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

Protest Music in France

Protest Music in France

Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia

Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia

Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa

Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa

Cutting Your Losses from a Bad or Toxic Relationship

Cutting Your Losses from a Bad or Toxic Relationship

Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead

Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead

Secrets of Numerology

Secrets of Numerology

Developing Government Policy Capability

Developing Government Policy Capability

Divinely Touched: Transform Your Life

Divinely Touched: Transform Your Life

Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels

Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels

The Hidden Cinema

The Hidden Cinema

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email