On the Disability Aesthetics of Music

Research Article| August 01 2016 On the Disability Aesthetics of Music Blake Howe, Blake Howe Convenor BLAKE HOWE is Assistant Professor of Music at Louisiana State University. He is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Recording Reviews Editor for Nineteenth-Century Music Review. His writings have appeared in this Journal, Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of Musicology, and the Musical Quarterly. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton Convenor STEPHANIE JENSEN-MOULTON is Associate Professor of Musicology and American Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Her edition of Miriam Gideon's 1958 opera Fortunato was published by A-R Editions in 2013, and she is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her writings on music and disability have appeared in American Music, Music Theory Online, and American Music Review. Her current book project focuses on opera and disability in twentieth-century America. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Joseph N. Straus, Joseph N. Straus JOSEPH N. STRAUS is Distinguished Professor of Music at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music (Oxford University Press, 2011) and coeditor of Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music (Routledge, 2006) and The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (Oxford University Press, 2016). He is currently completing a monograph on modernist music and the representation of disability. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jennifer Iverson, Jennifer Iverson JENNIFER IVERSON is Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. In 2015–16 she was External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, where she was working on a book on electronic music in the mid-twentieth century. Her articles have appeared in Twentieth-Century Music, Music Analysis, Tempo, and Music Theory Online, with another forthcoming in Music Theory Spectrum. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jessica A. Holmes, Jessica A. Holmes JESSICA A. HOLMES is a PhD candidate in Musicology at McGill University, where she is completing a dissertation on disability and contemporary music performance with a particular focus on music and deafness. She is a former recipient of the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2012–15), and has presented her research at the annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the Society for Disability Studies. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Michael B. Bakan, Michael B. Bakan MICHAEL B. BAKAN is Professor of Ethnomusicology at Florida State University. His research on the ethnomusicology of autism has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and other agencies. His books include World Music: Traditions and Transformations (McGraw-Hill, 2007) and Music of Death and New Creation (University of Chicago Press, 1999). He is currently completing a book entitled Speaking of Music: Conversations with Autistic Thinkers. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Andrew Dell'Antonio, Andrew Dell'Antonio ANDREW DELL'ANTONIO is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the way different modes of listening influence the social uses and cultural meanings of music. In addition to a collaboration with Elizabeth Grace, he blogs at http://www.theavidlistener.com, and is the editor of Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing (University of California Press, 2004), author of Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy (University of California Press, 2011), and coauthor of the textbook The Enjoyment of Music (12th ed., W. W. Norton, 2015). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Elizabeth J. Grace Elizabeth J. Grace ELIZABETH J. GRACE is Assistant Professor of Education at National Louis University in Chicago. Interested in performance and disability studies, she is currently working with Andrew Dell'Antonio on an ethnographic oral history of neurodivergent musicking and experience, and is completing an autoethnographic monograph about theater training and autistic ethical thought. She serves on the board of directors of the Society for Disability Studies. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2016) 69 (2): 525–563. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.2.525 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures On the Disability Aesthetics of Music. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 August 2016; 69 (2): 525–563. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.2.525 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search in memoriam Tobin Siebers Drawing on diverse interdisciplinary perspectives (encompassing literature, history, sociology, visual art, and, more recently, music), the field of disability studies offers a sociopolitical analysis of disability, focusing on its social construction while shifting attention from biology (the traditional object of study for science and medicine) to culture (the object of study for humanists).1 Within this cultural perspective, scholars usually operate under two methodologies: ethnography, to profile disabled persons (contemporary or historical) and investigate the ways in which their bodies contribute to their sense of identity and social reception; and hermeneutics, to examine artistic representations of disability that reflect contemporaneous attitudes and prejudices (e.g., Captain Ahab's prosthetic leg, Darth Vader's cyborg body). Both approaches have given rise to the observation that disability has historically been conceived as a fragmentation or corruption of an able-bodied norm, as a deviation from some conformational standard: think of Lucia di... You do not currently have access to this content.