BiblioVault - Books about Its Own

A Language of Its Own

Sense and Meaning in the Making of Western Art Music

Ruth Katz

University of Chicago Press, 2009

The Western musical tradition has produced not only music, but also countless writings about music that remain in continuous—and enormously influential—dialogue with their subject. With sweeping scope and philosophical depth, A Language of Its Own traces the past millennium of this ongoing exchange.

Ruth Katz argues that the indispensible relationship between intellectual production and musical creation gave rise to the Western conception of music. This evolving and sometimes conflicted process, in turn, shaped the art form itself. As ideas entered music from the contexts in which it existed, its internal language developed in tandem with shifts in intellectual and social history. Katz explores how this infrastructure allowed music to explain itself from within, creating a self-referential and rational foundation that has begun to erode in recent years.

A magisterial exploration of a frequently overlooked intersection of Western art and philosophy, A Language of Its Own restores music to its rightful place in the history of ideas.

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The Past Leads a Life of Its Own

Wayne Fields

University of Chicago Press, 1997

The Past Leads a Life of Its Own is a compelling collection of stories centered around one boy's childhood in the rural midwest in the 1950s, his love of nature, his family, and their often nomadic existence.

"Going through these pages quickly would be like chug-a-lugging a jar of honey fresh from the comb, or wolfing down a slow-cured, hickory-smoked country ham. It is a rich and complexly flavored work of fiction, a book to be savored."—Harper Barnes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Set against the rhythms of nature, Fields's 16 luminous, interrelated stories celebrate a boy's coming-of-age. . . . The beauty of these deeply felt stories lies in their spare, ear-perfect language and in quiet epiphanies."—Publishers Weekly

"[A] beautifully subtle work. . . . Here are a series of vignettes, each capturing some moment in nature, poetic and ethereal. . . . [They] are like stones skipping on water, capturing the struggles of a family leaving one way of life behind for another, Fields remembers the feeling of a time and a place gone forever."—Library Journal

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Women's Studies on Its Own

A Next Wave Reader in Institutional Change

Robyn Wiegman, ed.

Duke University Press, 2002

"We thought the study of women would be a temporary phase; eventually we would all go back to our disciplines."—Gloria Bowles, From the Afterword

Since the 1970s, Women's Studies has grown from a volunteerist political project to a full-scale academic enterprise. Women's Studies on Its Own assesses the present and future of the field, demonstrating how institutionalization has extended a vital, ongoing intellectual project for a new generation of scholars and students.

Women’s Studies on Its Own considers the history, pedagogy, and curricula of Women’s Studies programs, as well as the field’s relation to the managed university. Both theoretically and institutionally grounded, the essays examine the pedagogical implications of various divisions of knowledge—racial, sexual, disciplinary, geopolitical, and economic. They look at the institutional practices that challenge and enable Women’s Studies—including interdisciplinarity, governance, administration, faculty review, professionalism, corporatism, fiscal autonomy, and fiscal constraint. Whether thinking about issues of academic labor, the impact of postcolonialism on Women’s Studies curricula, or the relation between education and the state, the contributors bring insight and wit to their theoretical deliberations on the shape of a transforming field.

Contributors. Dale M. Bauer, Kathleen M. Blee, Gloria Bowles, Denise Cuthbert, Maryanne Dever, Anne Donadey, Laura Donaldson, Diane Elam, Susan Stanford Friedman, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Inderpal Grewal, Sneja Gunew, Miranda Joseph, Caren Kaplan, Rachel Lee, Devoney Looser, Jeanette McVicker, Minoo Moallem, Nancy A. Naples, Jane O. Newman, Lindsey Pollak, Jean C. Robinson, Sabina Sawhney, Jael Silliman, Sivagami Subbaraman, Robyn Warhol, Marcia Westkott, Robyn Wiegman, Bonnie Zimmerman

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