A'Court Concert

Years ago, my cousins and I would often gather with our families at my aunt and uncle's house.  My aunt Joyce Poley is a professional singer/songwriter, and it was always special whenever she could be coaxed to bring out her guitar and sing a few songs.

I was reminded of those impromptu concerts last evening at a home concert by Nova Scotia singer/songwriter Charlie A'Court. Charlie sang from his albums:

Bring on the Storm; Color Me Gone; Alone; and Live at the Marigold.

It was fun to sit in a friend's living room and listen to Charlie's tuneful, joyful songs. I love acoustic guitar and Charlie delivered. Charlie's music roams to folk and country places and briefly triggers many sound-sense memories for me - did I hear a John Hammond riff in there?

The concert happened because of the Home Routes organization which exists to bring home concerts with world-class musicians to as many Canadians as possible.

I liked the idea when I heard about it; now I can say that I very much liked the experience as well.

Charlie A'Court is nominated for best Blues Artist/Group Recording and Male Artist Recording at the 2009 Nova Scotia Music Awards for the Live at the Marigold recording, and also for Bell Aliant Entertainer of the Year.

When he wins these awards, I will shamelessly name drop and let everyone know that I was at a small, exclusive home concert with the artist!!!

I would like to invite Charlie A'Court to my soiree.

Pop(ping) Cultural Studies' Balloon

Michael Berube, in his article "What's the Matter with Cultural Studies" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, discusses the history and effectiveness of cultural studies, mostly in the United States.

He takes on the role of devil's advocate, questioning the past successes and failures of cultural studies - and the possibilities and prognosis for the future.

Berube also discusses the misunderstanding of what cultural studies is and the frequent practice of "'doing'" cultural studies by critiquing pop culture:

The result is that cultural studies now means everything and nothing; it has effectively been conflated with "cultural criticism" in general, and associated with a cheery "Pop culture is fun! " approach. Anybody writing about The Bachelor or American Idol is generally understood to be "doing" cultural studies, especially by his or her colleagues elsewhere in the university. In a recent interview, Stuart Hall, a former director of the Birmingham Centre and still the most influential figure in cultural studies, gave a weary response to this development, one that speaks for itself: "I really cannot read another cultural-studies analysis of Madonna or The Sopranos."

Too many in English departments (the department most influenced by cultural studies, according to Berube) have abandoned more conventional pursuits in favor of studies of pop culture divorced from a literary context.

A thesis on TV depictions of King Arthur with historical comparison to slightly older movies, but with no knowledge of or reference to Tennyson or Mallory, galls me for its ignorance and arrogance (and worries me for the future of human knowledge).

Berube is hopeful for the future of cultural studies, believing it can improve from its present state and practice:

...cultural studies can do a better job of complicating the political-economy model in media theory, a better job of complicating our accounts of neoliberalism, and a better job of convincing people inside and outside the university that cultural studies' understanding of hegemony is a form of understanding with great explanatory power—that is to say, a form of understanding that actually works.

Let's hope he's right and, in English departments at least, we see less superficial "study" of tattoos and TV.

Two of Berube's books are Life as We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child and Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities.

I would like to invite Michael Berube to my soiree.

Unveiling Abstraction

Robert Fulford writes about Marnia Lazreg in The National Post article The politics of the veil:

Lazreg's fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women's beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation.

In the book, Lazreg writes about, what Fulford calls, "the most potent human symbol on earth," although it is not a symbol for piety. According to Fulford, Lazreg believes:

In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.

Further, any woman wearing the full body and face covering is erased:

...Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction.

In the Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra ( nom de plume of Mohammed Moulessehoul), a woman must be executed, but the individual woman under the burqa is not really the issue. The identity of the prisoner is never verified because the need to assert control over all women is so strong - any woman will do and must die.


The execution is concrete enough; but the whole process is symbolic of political ideology and male power. The woman becomes an abstraction.

Marnia Lazreg teaches sociology at Hunter College CUNY. She elucidates these issues on behalf of us all, as she studies, lectures on, and writes about development, gender, and geopolitics of Islam.

I would like to invite Marnia Lazreg to my soiree.