I wrote a book

My book, Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children’s Culture, was published by Oxford University Press in May. I started the research for this book in the fall of 2007, so this is just about ten years in the making. Learning about and with and from kids changed my life, and I am so grateful to the kids who were a part of this project. I hope it offers an honest reflection of their values and experiences of being kids in 2007 and 2008. There’s a preview on google books, and also here.

Panel for SEM 2010 on music in “total” institution

“Music in ‘Total’ Institutions”

Benjamin J. Harbert, “Blood in My Eyes: The Inspiring Principles of Musicians at Louisiana’s Hunt Prison”
Anita Høyvik, “How to Prescribe a Healthy Listening? Music Listening in Terms of Medical Efficacy at Rivington House”
Jennifer A. Woodruff, “‘Girl, you nasty!’: Policing the Boundaries between Inappropriate Dancing and Moral Character”
Tyler Bickford, “Musical Consumerism in School: Expressive Negotiations of Institutional Authority During Classroom Lessons at a Vermont Elementary School”

Abstracts below the jump.

Teachers College Educational Technology Conference

Will present a paper called “Mobile Music in School: Interactivity and Intimacy in Children’s Uses of MP3 Players at a Vermont Elementary School” at a conference at Teachers College in May: TCETC 2010, “Media and Designs for Learning.” Looking forward to the opportunity to exchange ideas with the folks across 120th street.

Lise Waxer and Hewitt Pantaleoni prizes

A couple of papers I presented in 2008 received prizes this fall:

The 2009 Lise Waxer Prize from the Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology, recognizing the most distinguished student paper in the ethnomusicology of popular music presented at the SEM annual meeting in Wesleyan, CT, October 2008, for my paper, “Media Consumption as Social Organization at a New England Primary School” (pdf or scribd).

and

The 2009 Hewitt Pantaleoni Prize from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (MACSEM) for the best student paper presented at the Middle Atlantic SEM Chapter meeting in New York, March 2008, for my paper, “The Social Economy of Headphone Use in a New England Primary School.” That paper turned into my “Earbuds Are Good for Sharing” for the Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music.

Needless to say I’m pleased and grateful.

JFRR review

My review of Marsh’s Musical Playground posted below came out at JFR and is online here.

Panel for AAA 2009 on constructions of childhood in schooling

More happy news: the panel Micah Gilmer and I organized for this fall’s meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia has been accepted. Here’s the program; abstracts for the panel and my paper after the jump:

“Schooling Which Child? Contested Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Educational Settings” (sponsored by the Anthropology of Children and Childhood Interest Group)

Bambi Chapin (University Maryland, Baltimore County),
“Developing Understanding in Children, Understandings of Child Development: Sri Lankan Models of Child Development and the New Educational Reforms”
Jennifer Adair (University of Texas, Austin), “Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Teachers’ Conceptualizations of Diversity and Childhood in Five U.S. Cities: The Chancla Debate”
Micah Gilmer (Duke University), ” ‘These Kids Got to Step Up and Be Men’: Language and Football as a Liminal Space at Eastside High”
Alicia Blum-Ross (University of Oxford), “Creative Geniuses or Feral Thugs? Participatory Filmmaking and the Construction of ‘Youth’ “
Tyler Bickford (Columbia University), “Competing Public Childhoods: Entertainment Media, Consumerism, and Children’s Expressive Practices at a Vermont Primary School”
Chaired by John Herzog (Northeastern University)