Introduction: Three Kinds of Engagement

To change the course of the unsustainable trends of American Prosperity, we must change the social climate of injustice that allows it to continue. This change entails three operations: create an interpretive framework that covers the key components of our living systems, tell coherent stories that include past injustices and places to repair them, and create a civic space that enables us to create a climate of justice. The four components of the interpretive framework are the Earth, our humanity, the social, and the civic. The historical narratives are stories guided by the principle of coherence, which reveal opportunities to change the current course of history. Making such changes involves civilians entering civic spaces where they can invite citizens to care for justice and for future generations.

Antisemitism in the global populist international

This article explores the relationship between antisemitism and international politics, specifically the potent role that antisemitism plays in the development and maintenance of the global populist international. After briefly sketching the history of modern transnational antisemitism, I make two principal arguments for why antisemitism should be of more direct concern for the scholarship of International Relations. First, antisemitism serves as a powerful interpretive framework for contemporary far-right populist movements that are challenging the current international order. Second, antisemitism is shaping the formation of new international alliances. The strategic use of antisemitism in far-right populist foreign policy has changed, as evidenced in the increasing decoupling of attitudes towards Israel from antisemitism against diaspora Jews and a rise in pro-Israel policies of far-right antisemitic parties and movements. I conclude by reasserting that International Relations should understand antisemitism as one of the interpretive foundations of the global illiberal resurgence.

From Coltrane to Magma and beyond: Interpreting musical meaning through composition

<p>This thesis is an exploration of the work A Love Supreme composed by John Coltrane, his influence on the band Magma, and their composition, Zëss. By applying Clifford Geertz’s interpretive framework to the work of Coltrane and Magma, I suggest that the spiritual concerns of these composers was the primary motivating factor in the creation of their music. I argue for a definition of Coltrane’s musical work, particularly A Love Supreme, as ‘arranged spontaneous spiritual music’, acknowledging that Coltrane’s spirituality was a vehicle for the music and, simultaneously, the music was a vehicle for his spirituality. I also discuss the composer of Zëss, Christian Vander, who has a deeply cemented love of John Coltrane’s music and spiritual concepts, both of which coexist in the music of his band, Magma. My composition synthesises and expands on the work of both Coltrane and Magma. Descend, based on Dante’s Inferno, contains my own interpreted meanings of A Love Supreme and Zëss. The story of Inferno is similar to that of Coltrane’s and Vander’s commitment in their spiritual lives, and in this project I make my own interpretations to access my own spirituality through the act of composition.</p>

From Coltrane to Magma and beyond: Interpreting musical meaning through composition

<p>This thesis is an exploration of the work A Love Supreme composed by John Coltrane, his influence on the band Magma, and their composition, Zëss. By applying Clifford Geertz’s interpretive framework to the work of Coltrane and Magma, I suggest that the spiritual concerns of these composers was the primary motivating factor in the creation of their music. I argue for a definition of Coltrane’s musical work, particularly A Love Supreme, as ‘arranged spontaneous spiritual music’, acknowledging that Coltrane’s spirituality was a vehicle for the music and, simultaneously, the music was a vehicle for his spirituality. I also discuss the composer of Zëss, Christian Vander, who has a deeply cemented love of John Coltrane’s music and spiritual concepts, both of which coexist in the music of his band, Magma. My composition synthesises and expands on the work of both Coltrane and Magma. Descend, based on Dante’s Inferno, contains my own interpreted meanings of A Love Supreme and Zëss. The story of Inferno is similar to that of Coltrane’s and Vander’s commitment in their spiritual lives, and in this project I make my own interpretations to access my own spirituality through the act of composition.</p>

Pious Puppets and the Limits of Symbolism

Following the immensely successful premiere of Maurice Bouchor and Paul Vidal’s Noël, ou le Mystère de la Nativité at Paris’s Petit-Théâtre de la Marionnette in 1890, numerous critics observed an increasing fondness for religiously themed theatrical productions on the city’s popular stages. Though these works have received scant musicological attention, scholars often credit the success of these works to the rise of Symbolism during the 1880s, citing the Symbolists’ fondness for the realm of the metaphysical as a step toward a universally spiritual world that could be revealed only through non-representational signs. Contemporaneous reception of these works, however, suggests that audiences understood them not as exemplars of a burgeoning aesthetic movement, replete with idealistic suggestion, but rather as a nostalgic return to the Catholicism of their youth, regardless of—and likely despite—their skepticism of the Church as an institution. This chapter provides new readings of Maurice Bouchor and Casimir Baille’s Tobie and Bouchor and Paul Vidal’s Noël, ou le Mystère de la Nativité that reveals how Symbolism, as an interpretive framework, falls short of the musical and political complexities within these works. Through analyses of poetic texts, musical scores, and critical responses, this chapter examines the roles that such puppet productions played in the enfolding of Catholicism into the “secular” Republican mindset.

Macroharmonic Progressions through the Discrete Fourier Transform

This article examines macroharmony through the lens of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) using computational analysis. It first introduces the DFT, giving an interpretive framework to understand the theory of chord quality first introduced by Ian Quinn (2007) before extending the theory to macroharmonies. Subsequently, the paper discusses different approaches—including different weighting and windowing procedures—to retrieving pitch data for computational analysis. An analysis of macroharmony in Domine Jesu from Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, Op. 9 follows. I show that the DFT reflects intuition, reveals form-functional macroharmonies in the movement, and provides us with a perspective to find novel hearings.

Exploring an Integrated Conceptual Framework as an Interpretive Framework for Intercultural Communication Research

This paper describes an interpretive framework that is based on an integrated conceptual framework for intercultural communication as the focal point to understand the interconnectivity between social categories and intercultural interactions. Intercultural communication is communication between individuals who are culturally distinct. While a wide range of intercultural communication studies can be found in various literatures, none has offered an integrated conceptual framework to study intercultural interactions in a Malaysian context. There is a gap on an interpretive approach as a framework to support its data analysis and meaningful claims, particularly in multicultural and multilingual Malaysia. Thus, this paper offers an integrated conceptual framework based on intercultural communication, language and intercultural communication, social identity theory, and identity and interaction, to address face-to-face interactions between culturally diverse individuals. Besides adding on to the body of knowledge in intercultural communication, this paper assumes an impetus for approaching interdisciplinary future research in various intercultural interaction settings.