Dr. Kristina Jacobsen, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, was recently awarded the Fulbright Con Il Sud Award for Teaching and Research to support her upcoming research during her sabbatical on the Italian Island of Sardinia [Sardigna]. As a Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Jacobsen will be doing fieldwork for a new book project focusing on country music in Sardinia, titled “Sing Me Back Home: Songwriting, Language Reclamation and Italian Colonialism in Sardinia.” She will also be writing songs and recording a new Americana album of cowrites with Sardinian songwriters to accompany this book, presenting her research at Universities on the Italian continent, and teaching a class at the University of Cágliari in Sardinia.
Heterophony: Texture, Technique, and Social Commentary
This lecture is in two parts: the first draws from my research on the 1960s jazz avant-garde and musicians’ interests in heterophonic musical textures. For the second part, I perform original music that utilizes heterophony and “noise” in a solo electronic and improvised format.
The Gay West: From Drug Store Cowboys to Rodeo Queens
The masculine ideal represented by the American cowboy is variously interpreted by spectators, dancers, musicians, and contestants at gay rodeos and country western dances across the U.S. Examining embodied gender practices within these communities, this talk articulates the sonic, social, and geographical spaces of the gay American West.
The Cruelty of Jazz: Toward a Hemispheric Politics of Sound
Rooted in concepts of affect and Empire, this paper argues that jazz operated in various 20th century Latin American settings as a vital touchstone bearing the risks and benefits of urban modernization, hemispheric geopolitics, and transnational cultural production, “cruelly” echoing the United States’ cultural, political, and economic dominance in the hemisphere and beyond.