“Walk Like the Heroes”: The Performed Identity of Bruce Springsteen and the Relationship to Contemporary Popular Music Performance

This thesis examines the trend of contemporary popular musicians referencing and being compared to Bruce Springsteen. To do so, the work analyzes the performed social identity of Springsteen and its relationship to popular music performance, particularly in terms of understanding and assessing the motivations behind comparisons with Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem, a band frequently though to represent Sprinsteen's influence. Two case studies were conducted to examine the performed personas of both artists, informed by theories of the communication of meaning and identity. Springsteen is found to portray a traditionally American, White, working class male, representative of the idealized image of early American republican philosophy. Alternately, Fallon is found to perform a similar social identity without the significant evocation of this republicanism. Comparisons between these artists are theorized as emerging from their use of similar identity representations and indicators of meaning, particularly in their communication of authenticity.

“Walk Like the Heroes”: The Performed Identity of Bruce Springsteen and the Relationship to Contemporary Popular Music Performance

This thesis examines the trend of contemporary popular musicians referencing and being compared to Bruce Springsteen. To do so, the work analyzes the performed social identity of Springsteen and its relationship to popular music performance, particularly in terms of understanding and assessing the motivations behind comparisons with Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem, a band frequently though to represent Sprinsteen's influence. Two case studies were conducted to examine the performed personas of both artists, informed by theories of the communication of meaning and identity. Springsteen is found to portray a traditionally American, White, working class male, representative of the idealized image of early American republican philosophy. Alternately, Fallon is found to perform a similar social identity without the significant evocation of this republicanism. Comparisons between these artists are theorized as emerging from their use of similar identity representations and indicators of meaning, particularly in their communication of authenticity.

Constructing identities through music videos: a case study analysis of Tegan and Sara's music videos

"I believe that our music does not have sexuality," proclaimed Sara of Tegan and Sara, in an interview for The Advocate (200S). This paper argues that Tegan and Sara's music videos do in fact contain elements that reflect their sexuality, and examines the extent to which these videos demonstrate their public identity. In order to understand the composition of music videos and the nonverbal signs related to gender and sexuality within them, I draw upon theories of performed identity, music video genres, settings, and lyrical analysis. In examining three of Tegan and Sara's music videos, "The First" (2000), "Back In Your Head" (2007), and "Closer" (2012). I present a narrative structure of their musical career, and outline how their approach and portrayal of their sexual orientation has evolved over the thirteen years they have been together as a band. The results show that Tegan and Sara have increasingly embraced their gender and sexuality over time.

Constructing identities through music videos: a case study analysis of Tegan and Sara's music videos

"I believe that our music does not have sexuality," proclaimed Sara of Tegan and Sara, in an interview for The Advocate (200S). This paper argues that Tegan and Sara's music videos do in fact contain elements that reflect their sexuality, and examines the extent to which these videos demonstrate their public identity. In order to understand the composition of music videos and the nonverbal signs related to gender and sexuality within them, I draw upon theories of performed identity, music video genres, settings, and lyrical analysis. In examining three of Tegan and Sara's music videos, "The First" (2000), "Back In Your Head" (2007), and "Closer" (2012). I present a narrative structure of their musical career, and outline how their approach and portrayal of their sexual orientation has evolved over the thirteen years they have been together as a band. The results show that Tegan and Sara have increasingly embraced their gender and sexuality over time.

Star Performances: Ed Roberts on the Speaking Circuit, 1983-1995

This article uses historical research methods to explore noted disability rights leader Ed Roberts' performances on the speaker circuit between 1983, when he left his position as director of the California Department of Rehabilitation, and his death in 1995. This article examines how he managed his performed identity, his self as presented on stage, in order to be a disability star. Using his own life story as a poignant example, he narrated an autobiography of how a paralyzed man could live a vigorous, successful, indeed a joyful life. His personal stories communicated his lived experiences of battling discrimination and stereotypes. Roberts skillfully and strategically marshalled his own growing celebrity as the most prominent disabled American while he promoted the cause of civil rights for disabled people.

Inspiring desire: A new materialist bent to doctoral education in Arts and Humanities

Doctoral learning entails transition from experienced student to stance-defending researcher, exposed to international critique: a disorientation and reorientation into a new identity. Arts and Humanities candidates typically navigate these moves without much of a map, choosing their own topics, avoiding the more externally defined approach available to STEM students, and mapping out their own research routes. They are often driven by desire and passion for their topic. Much of each candidate’s core identity will be inflected by this transition of emergence, a transition that involves their embodiment, emotion and social persona. With intense and sometimes uncomfortable transition in mind, and desire as driver, new materialism, namely nomadic feminism and queer theory, can inform doctoral pedagogy in Arts and Humanities. The destabilization of normativity opens the potentials and challenges of inhabited and performed identity. Queer theory’s longstanding negotiation of social and personal tensions gives a heuristic model for understanding doctoral identity transition.