Thesiss

Iranian musical instruments played an integral role in the cultural landscape of the Safavid Court (1501–1722) and their presence in contemporary illustrated manuscripts draws attention to how music fared under the changing tempers of the Safavid shahs. Over the past century of …

This dissertation takes an organological, historical, and ethnographic approach to the study of innovative violin making in the twenty-first century. The violin is a long-established icon as well as a tool for the production of sound, and consequently, attempts to alter its trad…

The tenuous boundaries that separate humans, animals, and machines fascinate and sometimes unsettle us. In eighteenth-century France, conceptions of what differentiates humans from animals and machines became a sustained topic of interest in spaces that were public and private, …