The third session of Music, Language, Thought series will be held at NYU tomorrow. Details below.
Poster design by David Rager
Friday, October 2
Session I: 12 – 3p.m.
“Border Trouble: or, Ballad Mediality and ‘World Literature’”
Maureen McLane (English, New York University)
In this paper, Maureen N. McLane will explore how ballads, as both texts and tunes, have long crossed, troubled, yet also sustained multiple borders–historical, national, medial. A reckoning with balladry’s transmedial status, and with the long history of ballad scholarship in English, suggests many openings for further theoretical reflection: not least about the underexplored relations between recent discussion of “World Literature” and of “World Music.” Some specific topics: the ambiguous status of Scotland and of Scottish balladry since the 18th century; the place of Herder in recent theorizations of World Literature; “The Twa Sisters” as case study for investigations into locality and globality.
“Who Invented Music and Language?”
David Samuels (Music, New York University)
In some recent work on language evolution, music has re-emerged as a practice notable for its explanatory power. Yet this work also recycles dichotomous models that link language to the rational and music to the emotional. In this paper I attempt to come to an understanding of a possible music-language link that moves away from syntax and cognition and toward socialization and playfulness.
Session II: 4 – 7p.m.
“Overlooking the Ephemeral”
Carolyn Abbate (Music, University of Pennsylvania)
The talk centers on latency and ephemerality: why ephemeral phenomena are difficult to interpret, and the ways in which their traces can be recovered from recording media that accidentally preserved them; the specific examples are drawn from German silent film.
“Jurisgenerative Grammar (_For Alto_)”
Fred Moten (English, Duke University)
Silver Center of Arts and Science
100 Washington Square East
Department of Music, Room 220, 2nd Floor
Enter at Washington Place Doors
Admission free and open to the public
“Music, Language, Thought” is a new interdisciplinary event series organized by graduate students within New York University’s Music and Comparative Literature Departments. Broadly speaking, the series focuses on the relationship between music and language, and our speakers will examine its theoretical ramifications for politics, aesthetics and historiography. The project stems from ongoing conversation and collaboration between graduate students within these two departments, and will continue on an annual basis.
Sponsored by the FAS Department of Music and the Department of Comparative Literature
Organized by Michael Gallope, Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz, Magali Armillas-Tiseyra, Amy Cimini and Ceci Moss
