In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nomadic Turns:Epistemology, Experience, and Women University Band DirectorsElizabeth GouldMusic education occupations in the U.S. have been segregated by gender and race for decades. While women are most likely to teach young students in classroom settings, men are most likely to teach older students in all settings, but most particularly in wind/percussion ensembles.1 Despite gender-affirmative employment practices, men constitute a large majority among band directors at all levels.2 At the (...) postsecondary level in the U.S., women constitute less than 10%.3 In all cases and all levels, the vast majority of band directors are white. Occupational segregation inhibits the development of individuals' careers as well as the development of the profession as individuals choose or are hired for positions based on their gender and/or race rather than their abilities.In terms of women university band directors, researchers have investigated employment trends,4 personal and occupational characteristics,5 occupational role models, and professional identity.6 Their findings generally have supported the hypotheses that historical precedent, traditional socialization, discrimination, segregation, and lack of role models contribute to their persistently low percentage as band directors. Longitudinal studies7 demonstrate that the percentage of women band directors has not increased significantly, and may be actually [End Page 147] declining after thirty years of enforcing affirmative action laws, which would suggest that these interventions have not provided the basis for enacting change in the profession. Further, change does not seem possible if members of the profession do not understand what causes the situation to persist. For example, while the College Band Directors National Association has supported the Linda A. Hartley and Deborah A. Sheldon study,8 their concern seems to be in only identifying the extent of the situation with the intention of increasing the number of women and non-white individuals who are band directors within the profession as it currently is constructed. This empirical approach is inadequate because it addresses neither the values held by members of the profession, nor its structure, which as previous research indicates, is poorly understood and must change to make possible meaningful increases in the number of women and non-white people.The profession of conducting university bands exists within the profession of music education in general, which, of course, exists within the profession of music. Clearly, one cannot be adequately understood without placing it in the context of the others. What is needed, then, are richer, more substantive, and meaningful understandings of the professions in general and of specific questions within them in particular, as they may provide the basis on which change can be possible. In addition to addressing the issue of persistent occupational gender and racial segregation, questions that may be addressed include positionalities9 of bands in the music education profession, the relationship of performance/conducting to the music profession, and the role of the musician in society in general. In order to accomplish this, I propose an analytical method that is both postmodern and feminist, and in which the philosophical figuration of the nomad, as explicated by Rosi Braidotti,10 is central.Postmodern/Feminist AnalysisDescribed variously as a "philosophical perspective,"11 a "sensibility,"12 and a historical moment,13 postmodernism resists definition. It may be understood as a way of perceiving the world that accepts and even embraces contradictions and uncertainties while rejecting commonly accepted cultural beliefs and practices, including humanist understandings of identity, representation, and the subject. This is a "postmodernism of resistance"14 that interrogates cultural practices, focusing on what is unexpected, marginalized, and silenced, opening spaces for change. In contrast, analysis based on modernism is constrained by binary oppositions that inscribe the positionalities of social groups. These oppositions are exemplified by Subject/Other (for example, male/female, reason/emotion) and consist of asymmetrical power relations in which the former is privileged over the latter, and the latter is defined in terms of not-the former. Postmodern analysis [End Page 148] reveals what these dualisms exclude, distort, or obscure, and provides flexibility for research from a variety of perspectives. Braidotti describes it as a "new kind of theoretical style"15 in terms of thinking, design, and analysis of research, a style... (shrink)

A historically feminized profession, education in North America remains remarkably unaffected by feminism, with the notable exception of pedagogy and its impact on curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to describe characteristics of feminism that render it particularly useful and appropriate for developing potentialities in education and music education. As a set of flexible methodological tools informed by Gilles Deleuze's notions of philosophy and art, I argue feminism may contribute to education's becoming more efficacious, reflexive, and reflective of the (...) values of its participants. Its impetus involves ‘feminist imperative(s)’ to help in the sense articulated by Elizabeth Grosz: to provoke thought, challenge, and problematize. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nomadic Turns:Epistemology, Experience, and Women University Band DirectorsElizabeth GouldMusic education occupations in the U.S. have been segregated by gender and race for decades. While women are most likely to teach young students in classroom settings, men are most likely to teach older students in all settings, but most particularly in wind/percussion ensembles.1 Despite gender-affirmative employment practices, men constitute a large majority among band directors at all levels.2 At the (...) postsecondary level in the U.S., women constitute less than 10%.3 In all cases and all levels, the vast majority of band directors are white. Occupational segregation inhibits the development of individuals' careers as well as the development of the profession as individuals choose or are hired for positions based on their gender and/or race rather than their abilities.In terms of women university band directors, researchers have investigated employment trends,4 personal and occupational characteristics,5 occupational role models, and professional identity.6 Their findings generally have supported the hypotheses that historical precedent, traditional socialization, discrimination, segregation, and lack of role models contribute to their persistently low percentage as band directors. Longitudinal studies7 demonstrate that the percentage of women band directors has not increased significantly, and may be actually [End Page 147] declining after thirty years of enforcing affirmative action laws, which would suggest that these interventions have not provided the basis for enacting change in the profession. Further, change does not seem possible if members of the profession do not understand what causes the situation to persist. For example, while the College Band Directors National Association has supported the Linda A. Hartley and Deborah A. Sheldon study,8 their concern seems to be in only identifying the extent of the situation with the intention of increasing the number of women and non-white individuals who are band directors within the profession as it currently is constructed. This empirical approach is inadequate because it addresses neither the values held by members of the profession, nor its structure, which as previous research indicates, is poorly understood and must change to make possible meaningful increases in the number of women and non-white people.The profession of conducting university bands exists within the profession of music education in general, which, of course, exists within the profession of music. Clearly, one cannot be adequately understood without placing it in the context of the others. What is needed, then, are richer, more substantive, and meaningful understandings of the professions in general and of specific questions within them in particular, as they may provide the basis on which change can be possible. In addition to addressing the issue of persistent occupational gender and racial segregation, questions that may be addressed include positionalities9 of bands in the music education profession, the relationship of performance/conducting to the music profession, and the role of the musician in society in general. In order to accomplish this, I propose an analytical method that is both postmodern and feminist, and in which the philosophical figuration of the nomad, as explicated by Rosi Braidotti,10 is central.Postmodern/Feminist AnalysisDescribed variously as a "philosophical perspective,"11 a "sensibility,"12 and a historical moment,13 postmodernism resists definition. It may be understood as a way of perceiving the world that accepts and even embraces contradictions and uncertainties while rejecting commonly accepted cultural beliefs and practices, including humanist understandings of identity, representation, and the subject. This is a "postmodernism of resistance"14 that interrogates cultural practices, focusing on what is unexpected, marginalized, and silenced, opening spaces for change. In contrast, analysis based on modernism is constrained by binary oppositions that inscribe the positionalities of social groups. These oppositions are exemplified by Subject/Other (for example, male/female, reason/emotion) and consist of asymmetrical power relations in which the former is privileged over the latter, and the latter is defined in terms of not-the former. Postmodern analysis [End Page 148] reveals what these dualisms exclude, distort, or obscure, and provides flexibility for research from a variety of perspectives. Braidotti describes it as a "new kind of theoretical style"15 in terms of thinking, design, and analysis of research, a style... (shrink)

It is difficult to overstate music's persistent and uneasy relationship with homosexuality in Western society. Associated with femininity for centuries, particularly in North America, participation in music has been believed to emasculate and thus homosexualize men and boys. The linking of music to women and emotion (as opposed to men and reason) contributes to the conflation of misogyny and homophobia in North American society generally and music and music education particularly. One effect of music's conflicted relationship with and to homosexuality (...) for lesbians and gay men is to "disappear" them in both professions. As a function of disappeared positionalities, subject positions of homosexualities and potentialities of creating lives worth living are also disappeared. I explore ontological effects of disappeared in the world and music and music education, and reconceptualize "disappeared" in terms of Jacques Derrida's concept of "under erasure"—sous rature—in ways that may signal other ontological potentialities. (shrink)

The twenty-seven contributors to this book are professors, teachers, and students representing all parts of Canada, as well as the USA, Brazil, Norway, Finland, and South Africa. They wrestle with the meaning and practice of social justice in and through music education.

A century after the advent of quantum mechanics and general relativity, both theories enjoy incredible empirical success, constituting the cornerstones of modern physics. Yet, paradoxically, they suffer from deep-rooted, so-far intractable, conflicts. Motivations for violations of the notion of relativistic locality include the Bell’s inequalities for hidden variable theories, the cosmological horizon problem, and Lorentz-violating approaches to quantum geometrodynamics, such as Horava–Lifshitz gravity. Here, we explore a recent proposal for a “real ensemble” non-local description of quantum mechanics, in which “particles” (...) can copy each others’ observable values AND phases, independent of their spatial separation. We first specify the exact theory, ensuring that it is consistent and has quantum mechanics as a fixed point, where all particles with the same values for a given observable have the same phases. We then study the stability of this fixed point numerically, and analytically, for simple models. We provide evidence that most systems are locally stable to small deviations from quantum mechanics, and furthermore, the phase variance per value of the observable, as well as systematic deviations from quantum mechanics, decay as \ time)\, where \. Interestingly, this convergence is controlled by the absolute value of energy, suggesting a possible connection to gravitational physics. Finally, we discuss different issues related to this theory, as well as potential novel applications for the spectrum of primordial cosmological perturbations and the cosmological constant problem. (shrink)

It is shown that the 33 complex rays in three dimensions used by Penrose to prove the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem have the same orthogonality relations as the 33 real rays of Peres, and therefore provide an isomorphic proof of the theorem. It is further shown that the Peres and Penrose rays are just two members of a continuous three-parameter family of unitarily inequivalent rays that prove the theorem.

Issues of desire in music education are integral and anathema to the profession. Constituted of and by desire, we bodily engage music emotionally and cognitively; yet references to the body are limited to how it may be better managed in order to produce more satisfactory (desired) sounds, thus disciplining desire as we focus on the content of teaching (music) to the virtual exclusion of its subjects (students)—and our selves. Developing embodied senses of learning and teaching where students’ and educators’ subject (...) formation may be understood in terms of their/our desire holds potentialities of fully engaging us in music education, even as it also implicates music education practices in the production of desire as positivity rather than lack, and requires political pedagogies locating us as mindful bodies in relationship with each other, music, and the social world. My discussion is framed by poststructural feminism and affirmative postmodernism, and I argue that desire as production is integral to socially grounded and responsible subject positions claimed in, through, and as performative music literacies. (shrink)

North American music education is a commodity sold to pre-service and in-service music teachers. Like all mass-produced consumables, it is valuable to the extent that it is not creative, that is, to the extent that it is reproducible. This is demonstrated in curricular materials, notably general music series textbook and music scores available from a rapidly shrinking cadre of publishers, as well as rigid and pre-determined pedagogical practices. Distributing resources and techniques that produce predicable, consistent, and repeatable goods and services, (...) the economy of music teacher preparation and development must necessarily exclude creativity, which consequently must be viewed as not only inefficient but unprofitable. More than undesirable, however, creativity is constructed as dangerous as it injects difference in a system that relies on sameness. Because of its implications for music education discourse and practices, I focus my discussion on research in general and feminist critique in particular in music education. Reading through Monique Wittig's ‘The Trojan Horse’ as literary war machine, I argue that creative writing and academic research are not mutually exclusive, and that it is only through infusing the literary or creative in scholarly writing that interlocking systems of oppression may be altered and difference implicated in music education. My analysis of Roberta Lamb's (1995) research piece, ‘Tone Deaf/Symphonies Singing: Sketches for a Musicale’ depicts it as Trojan Horse, albeit one that Lamb herself, most likely as a function of editorial imperative, hobbles. (shrink)

When women take up the work of music education, of the university, and become nomadic, engaging Deleuze and Guattari's war machine, all kinds of things happen. As nomads in music education, women traverse borders and boundaries that would otherwise limit and constrain them as they initiate alternative possibilities related to teaching and learning music. For women working at the university level, this is yearning, the necessity to engage in crucial, meaningful, intellectual work, to think and write work that stimulates and (...) inspires, as we are passionately and artistically engaged in everyday life. The nomadic war machine of women working in music education, embodied as yearning, looks for what more is there, what more in music education can be created and actualized. Conceiving music education as difference, in terms of its creative potential, women engage potentialities of experimentation, risk, and chance. (shrink)