Many of St. Vincent’s songs, videos, and stage acts use grotesque scenarios and images to examine the roles we play and the identities we create and embody as well as the anxieties associated with them. They employ “exaggeration, distortion, or unexpected combination” to construct and inhabit subjectivities that are inescapably hybrid and often monstrous: simultaneouslyContinue reading ““Laughing with a Mouth of Blood”: St. Vincent’s Gothic Grotesque”
Tag Archives: Gender
Virtual Book Launch Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism
I’m pleased to announce the publication of Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism (Routledge, 2022), which is the first book-length work to explore the interrelationships among contemporary female musicians and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, music, and literature by women and men. The music and videos of contemporary musicians including Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, The Carters, MissyContinue reading “Virtual Book Launch Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism”
David Bowie and Romantic Androgyny
My fifteen-year-old self couldn’t assimilate Bowie’s gender subversion: both of his appearances as a male that night [on SNL in 1979] were completely artificial, one kind of boy doll or another, the former’s movement completely restricted and the latter’s hyperactively unnatural. . . Bowie’s theatrical androgyny disrupted a culture of authenticity that was already, butContinue reading “David Bowie and Romantic Androgyny”
Writing about Rock / Writing about Romanticism
Why specifically rock and Romanticism? Why Romanticism at all?
Latest Article on Sequart: Ex Machina
I just posted my latest article to Sequart: “Ex Machina: Girlbots vs. Geekboys and Creation Anxiety in the New Frankenstein.” Check it out.
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 