Butler, Chakrabarty and the possibilities of radical postsecular politics

This article interprets critiques of secularity and the related concept of history as progress in the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Judith Butler. At the same time, it defends their approach against the criticism voiced by Gregor McLennan. It shows that the postsecular conception of the politics of both authors is not just an attempt to open public space to a wider range of religious and cultural voices. Rather, it is a critique of the way in which political secularism and the ideology of progress are used by the modern state to legitimize the exercise of its own power. Butler and Chakrabarty's postsecular policy is thus based primarily on coalition building against these legitimization frameworks, which opens up the possibility of forming new postsecular political subjects. It illustrates the theoretical approach of both authors with an example of the church sanctuary movement in Germany.

Music, Memory and Memoir: Critical and creative engagement with an emerging genre

In this article, we outline and explore a plural and flexible methodology for engaging with the contemporary music memoir. These are texts in which narrative experimentation and self-conscious interrogations of voice shape content. They are texts that blur and blend the lines between memory, storytelling and myth. They offer a literate and culturally engaged reader the opportunity to shape their own musical histories and memories. We view these titles as a new and emerging genre. Our work, which we are developing in a forthcoming edited collection entitled Music, Memory and Memoir, approaches this fluid genre with a fluid methodology. We combine scholarly rigor and critical analysis in our readings of text but these combine with an open-ended and reflexive approach to our own critical and cultural voices.

Savoring the Artistic Experience in an Age of Commodification

This chapter brings forth the ideas of savoring, commodification, and learning within a multimedia, multiarts environment as food for thought for music educators working toward engaging learners in the technological space of music. First, the chapter presents the concept of savoring, with attention to the development of aesthetic experiences by critically scaffolding and facilitating musical activities for digital learners and engaging them musically amid their growing hunger for technological music commodities. Second, it recommends paying attention to popular music and glocalized representations and being cognizant of marginalized musical cultural voices because of the proliferation of commodified musics. Third, it discusses the provision for multimedia and multiarts experiences and activities within the music classroom.

Aliens of the World Unite!

This chapter explores how academic, intellectual, political, personal, natural, and cultural voices came into conversation with each other. Rarely do we explore the profound ways in which these same narratives of personal, cultural, political, and economic contexts and the various life experiences or the trials and tribulations of one's life can have a profound and uncanny influence on scientific epistemology and methodology. This chapter argues that the cultural contexts of science are not just a byproduct or curiosity but in fact can be the source of new insights, new theories, and new knowledge for science. Studying science in context affords a glimpse into the entanglements of the natural and cultural, the personal and professional, and the political and intellectual, entanglements that become a rich site for new knowledge and theory making.

Critical questions

Present contradictions in the intercultural communication field – the pre-eminence of western communication models and the minimization and denial of particular international and racial cultural voices – delimit the possibilities for nuanced theory building, scholarship, and teaching that may address the greatest challenge facing the world community – fostering understanding and advancing peace and security. This article introduces the notion of avant-garde epistemic confluence as one possibility for engendering greater levels of inclusion of marginalized and silenced voices at the epistemic core of the field to effectively address the evolving intergroup, multi-ethnic, and inter-religious conflicts on the world’s stage. Mobilizing principles grounded in mindfulness and intercultural alliance building at the individual and disciplinary levels via research, theorizing, and teaching is a driving force. Advancing a pragmatic vision of the intercultural communication field in this twenty-first-century moment with the potential to address complex cross-cultural and intergroup social and political tensions is the central mission.

Ethnically Diverse Faculty in Higher Ed: Belonging, Respect, and Role as Cultural Broker

The authors have completed a pilot study of the state of diverse faculty in higher education in the United States. Inquiries included the areas of belonging (if and how they developed a sense of belonging), professional respect (how colleagues regarded their achievements), and the role of cultural broker (how they functioned as cultural brokers in positions of influence and with diverse students). Initial results suggest that some diverse faculty members believe that racism is alive and well in higher education today. Others emphasize the challenge of adapting and belonging in higher education while retaining their unique cultural voices and having those voices be heard and utilized in movement toward cultural pluralism in the institutional environment of higher education.