Biblical Families in Music: Conflict and Heterodoxy in Oratorios, 1670–1770

By Robert L. Kendrick, Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Music

The oratorio was a Catholic musical-dramatic form, popular in Italy, Austria, and southern Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries. Performed in churches for upper-class and clerical audiences, these works conveyed biblical stories (often loosely adapted) through recitative delivery, arias, and ensemble numbers—often with a sermon in the middle. Robert L. Kendrick studies oratorios that dealt with spiritual tragedies, including death, fratricide, and forbidden love. These works, he argues, were didactic, teaching piety and the values of Christian family life. Kendrick explores how audiences’ reception of biblical stories was influenced by their adaptation as oratorios. And for these elite audiences—whose family ties were so important to social status—he asks how oratorios affected family dynamics.

Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession

By Jodi A. Byrd, Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity

Video games often replicate dynamics of settler colonialism, capitalism, and extraction, scholars have argued. Jodi A. Byrd builds on this research, drawing on Indigenous studies, Black studies, queer studies, and Indigenous feminist critique to examine how games such as Assassin’s Creed, Animal Crossing, and Dark Souls reproduce Indigenous dispossession and erasure. They also examine why these dynamics continue to appeal to the collective imagination. Analyzing independent, Indigenous-designed games, including Never Alone and Umurangi Generation, alongside major studio-backed blockbusters, Byrd highlights how Indigenous game designers have foregrounded Indigenous philosophies based in reciprocity and accountability. These artists, Byrd suggests, offer opportunities to reimagine games as sites of antiracism and decolonization.

The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies

By Susan C. Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science

In the past two decades, about two dozen countries have seen attacks on their democratic institutions and processes—from their own elected leaders. Susan C. Stokes investigates why this wave of what experts call democratic erosion is happening now. The answer, she argues, lies in the last decades of the 20th century, when free trade and globalization led to increased income inequality. This inequality set the stage for movements on both the right and the left that prepared voters to tolerate leaders’ actions against democratic norms and institutions. Stokes explains how democratic erosion occurs, analyzing the actions of leaders and changing dynamics within the voter base. Weakening of democratic institutions, she writes, can impact citizens’ rights and protections long after an autocratic leader has left office. She lays out strategies for stopping this process and repairing the damage it causes.

The Classic of Poetry: Ancient China’s Songbook

By Edward L. Shaughnessy, Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor in Early Chinese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Written between 1000 and 600 BCE, the Classic of Poetry (Shijing) is the oldest existing poetry collection in the world. The 305 poems are said to have been selected by Confucius from the 3,000 ancient poems known in his time, and they have been consistently read in China for millennia. Divided into three sections—Feng (airs), Ya (odes), and Song (hymns)—corresponding with the music that would have accompanied them, the poems are a record of the history and culture of their era. Archaeological discoveries in the 20th and 21st centuries of variations of and commentary on these poems, written on bamboo slips and silk rolls, have shed light on the collection, and new manuscript discoveries bearing on the poems have been published as recently as 2019. Edward L. Shaughnessy draws upon these newly unearthed insights in his translation of the Classic of Poetry to craft a comprehensive and modern interpretation of a foundational text.