During the heyday of Cold War cultural politics, state-sponsored performances of classical and popular music were central to the diplomatic agendas of the United States and the Soviet Union, while states on the periphery of the conflict often used state-funded performances to articulate their position in the polarized global network. In Albania in particular, the postwar government invested heavily in public performances, effectively creating a new genre of popular music: the wildly popular light music. In Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania, author Nicholas Tochka traces an aural history of Albania's government through a close examination of the development and reception of light music as it has long been broadcast at an annual song competition, Radio-Television Albania's Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide range of archival resources and over forty interviews with composers, lyricists, singers, and bureaucrats, Tochka describes how popular music became integral to governmental projects to improve society-and a major concern for both state-socialist and post-socialist regimes between 1945 and the present. Tochka's narrative begins in the immediate postwar period, arguing that state officials saw light music as a modernizing agent that would cultivate a cosmopolitan, rational populace. Interweaving archival research with ethnographic interviews, author Nicholas Tochka argues that modern political orders do not simply render social life visible, but also audible. As the Cold War thawed and communist states fell, the post-socialist government turned again to light music, now hoping that these musicians could help shape Albania into a capitalist, "European" state. Incorporating insights from ethnomusicology, governmental studies, and post-socialist studies, Audible States presents an original perspective on music and government that reveals the fluid, pervasive, but ultimately limited nature of state power in the modern world. Tochka's project represents a nascent entry in a growing area of study in music scholarship that focuses on post-soviet Europe and popular musics. A remarkably researched and engagingly written study, Audible States is a foundational text in this area and will be of great interest for music scholars and graduate students interested in popular music, sound studies, and politics of the Cold War.

Sidney Poitier remains one of the most recognizable black men in the world. Widely celebrated but at times criticized for the roles he played during a career that spanned 60 years, there can be no comprehensive discussion of black men in American film, and no serious analysis of 20th century American film history that excludes him. Poitier Revisited offers a fresh interrogation of the social, cultural and political significance of the Poitier oeuvre. The contributions explore the broad spectrum of critical issues summoned up by Poitier's iconic work as actor, director and filmmaker. Despite his stature, Poitier has actually been under-examined in film criticism generally. This work reconsiders his pivotal role in film and American race relations, by arguing persuasively, that even in this supposedly 'post-racial' moment of Barack Obama, the struggles, aspirations, anxieties, and tensions Poitier's films explored are every bit as relevant today as when they were first made.

Samuel Daniell can be described as one of the most accomplished yet least-known artists from the era of British exploration. He travelled around southern Africa between 1800 and 1803, and lived in Ceylon until his death in 1811.

His vivid sketches, drawings and watercolours are individuated and accomplished art works. Daniell’s representations of people of colour are remarkable for their perceptiveness and are perhaps unmatched in their sensitivity in the colonial era.

He also produced many drawings and paintings of animals that are noteworthy for their accuracy. His biography is a fascinating example of how art contributed to the accumulation of scientific knowledge and the extension of British imperial power.

Daniell’s drawings are widely scattered, and mostly unpublished. This biography reconstructs his life and travels by bringing together his known works from collections across the world.

Teaching the Postsecondary Music Student with Disabilities provides valuable information and practical strategies for teaching the college music student. With rising numbers of students with disabilities in university music schools, professors are being asked to accommodate students in their studios, classes, and ensembles. Most professors have little training or experience in teaching students with disabilities. This book provides a resource for creating an inclusive music education for students who audition and enter music school. Teaching the Postsecondary Music Student with Disabilities covers all of the topics that all readers need to know including law, assistive technology, high-incidence and low-incidence disabilities, providing specific details on the disability and how it impacts the learning of the music student.

The Last Word argues that the Hollywood novel opened up space for cultural critique of the film industry at a time when the industry lacked the capacity to critique itself. While the young studio system worked tirelessly to burnish its public image in the wake of celebrity scandal, several industry insiders wrote fiction to fill in what newspapers and fan magazines left out. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, these novels aimed to expose the invisible machinery of classical Hollywood cinema, including not only the evolving artifice of the screen but also the promotional discourse that complemented it. As likeminded filmmakers in the 1940s and 1950s gradually brought the dark side of the industry to the screen, however, the Hollywood novel found itself struggling to live up to its original promise of delivering the unfilmable. By the 1960s, desperate to remain relevant, the genre had devolved into little more than erotic fantasy of movie stars behind closed doors, perhaps the only thing the public couldn't already find elsewhere. Still, given their unique ability to speak beyond the institutional restraints of their time, these earlier works offer a window into the industry's dynamic creation and re-creation of itself in the public imagination.

During the century of British rule of the Indian subcontinent known as the British Raj, the rulers felt the significant influence of their exotic subjects. Resonances of the Raj examines the ramifications of the intertwined and overlapping histories of Britain and India on English music in the last fifty years of the colonial encounter, and traces the effects of the Raj on the English musical imagination. Conventional narratives depict a one-way influence of Britain on India, with the 'discovery' of Indian classical music occurring only in the post-colonial era. Drawing on new archival sources and approaches in cultural studies, author Nalini Ghuman shows that on the contrary, England was both deeply aware of and heavily influenced by India musically during the Indian-British colonial encounter. Case studies of representative figures, including composers Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst, and Maud MacCarthy, an ethnomusicologist and performer of the era, integrate music directly into the cultural history of the British Raj. Ghuman thus reveals unexpected minglings of peoples, musics and ideas that raise questions about 'Englishness', the nature of Empire, and the fixedness of identity. Richly illustrated with analytical music examples and archival photographs and documents, many of which appear here in print for the first time, Resonances of the Raj brings fresh hearings to both familiar and little-known musics of the time, and reveals a rich and complex history of cross-cultural musical imaginings which leads to a reappraisal of the accepted historiographies of both British musical culture and of Indo-Western fusion.