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Benjamin Tausig

@burrata.bsky.social

4.6K followers 1.6K following 4.5K posts

Associate professor of music and sound in Asia/anthropology. Crossword puzzle editor; TNG watcher.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · Jan 7

My new book, "Bangkok After Dark: Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, and the Making of Cold War Intimacies" is now available for pre-order!! It comes out in May.

You'll love reading it, I believe!

Use code E25TAUSG and it'll be about $21 + shipping.

www.dukeupress.edu/bangkok-afte...

www.dukeupress.edu

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

I'm super easy to tempt in that regard

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Time will tell etc

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks for sharing. This is important stuff to know about!

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

I think there are more reasons for the volume of submissions than popularity alone, but I fully agree that colleges should be teaching it and publishers should be covering it!

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

they're still together, they could still shock the world

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

For a time there was a lot of discussion about provincializing North American scholarship, pushing for global collaborations and inclusion. I guess my point is that I suspect that this provincialism is now officially happening ... but that it is not being initiated by North Americans.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Would love to read about it (will dig)

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

There's been ~three epochs of popular music studies: the first which focused on the Beatles and Elvis, bringing pop music into academic focus. The second, which sought to canonize Prince, Bowie, Queen et al in queering the field. And now a third, which has seen a turn to Asia. Generalizing a bit but

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, these are common frameworks for the submissions we get! There's a lot here.

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

That I think we should be cognizant of, as an indication of where scholarship is happening and where it isn't, who is pushing it and who is retrenching. This matters to any scholar in any field. Our universe is changing fast, and right now.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

No shade to the scholars themselves. Again, music studies (and other fields) urgently need to de-center North America. In a lot of ways this moment is exciting and overdue.

But there is simultaneously a specter of soft power, the kind that has always and will always be at play in academia ...

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

By contrast -- and in ways I don't have the knowledge to explain, but the effects of which are obvious -- Chinese and Korean institutions are clearly offering some combination of incentives and resources to generate scholarship, even on a topic like popular music.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

At the moment, for reasons you already know, scholars/students at US institutions are under enormous stress. There is so little time, space, and funding, and so many collateral challenges, that it can feel monumental to simply get work out the door. Fields demand it, but there are no resources.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

(Most work on China comes from scholars at Chinese institutions, and probably 75% of the work on K-pop is from scholars at Korean institutions).

But as a measure of how much support is coming from academic institutions, and how much these institutions are asking ppl to publish, it feels important

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

This is neutral in and of itself -- the submissions are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes right for the outlet, sometimes not. And I don't think whatsoever that there is any problem with so many submissions coming from outside the US -- to the contrary, I think it rules.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 1d

I've been watching something recently that feels notable, maybe like a barometer of soft power and the academy. Namely, as co-editor of JPMS (Journal of Popular Music Studies), we get many submissions every week.

Probably half of these focus either on Chinese music broadly, or Kpop in some regard.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

I think it’s actually really beautiful, but I’m also amused by the character of the abstraction. “We can’t really think of a picture that would represent the content. Perhaps you would enjoy 1/4 of a black circle?”

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

I have a lot of favs, but this era and style really hit

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

My daughter has a school assignment to write a scary story in just a few lines, and I showed her this from Clickhole, which is some of the most efficient horror scripting I've ever read.

Clickhole headline: "Incredible! We Asked These Astronauts What It's Like to Be In Space"

Astronaut Barry Wilmore, pictured in an orange spacesuit, says "“You never know true beauty until you see Earth from space, or true terror until you hear someone knocking on the space station door from outside. You look through the porthole and see an astronaut, but all your crew is inside and accounted for. You use the comm to ask who it is and he says he’s Ramirez returning from a repair mission, but Ramirez is sitting right next to you in the command module and he’s just as confused as you are. When you tell the guy this over the radio he starts banging on the door louder and harder, begging you to let him in, saying he’s the real Ramirez. Meanwhile, the Ramirez inside with you is pleading to keep the airlock shut. It really puts life on Earth into perspective.”

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

I have no idea whether FoS holds up. I liked it very much when I read it in my first six months of living in New York, but it might have that early 2000s white male nyc author sheen on it.

I can however absolutely vouch in advance for my “Ratatouille” novel.

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

I was also going to say “Ratatouille” before realizing you specified “novel,” but now I am thinking myself about novelizing that film.

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 2d

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 3d

At the same time, I hope you eventually do the right thing here

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 3d

A “Music for 18 Musicians”-type piece, but made up of interlocking recordings of players in handshake lines saying “good game, good game, good game, good game…”

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Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks for this!! Kinkos does still exist (as fedex I guess). I wonder if they would still take these orders at all, and if so what the cover price would look like for a course pack in 2025?

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