Kristen M. Turner – Författare

Opera and popular entertainment intersected at the turn of the twentieth century just as Americans debated the terms of citizenship. Kristen M. Turner disentangles the intertwined histories of race, class, gender, culture, and musical style to explain opera's place in the mass culture of the ragtime era.Turner examines performances ranging from Florenz Ziegfeld's early Follies to Black vaudeville shows to musical comedies, including everything from celebrity vehicles to obscure productions and overlooked artists. She reveals how opera's popularity in mass culture illuminates the effects of exclusionary immigration policies, pervasive racial and ethnic inequalities, debates over women's suffrage, and the imposition of legalized segregation. Performers and creators from many communities—white immigrants, Jewish, Black, and Asian American—strategically deployed operatic allusions and the genre's characteristic vocal timbre to assert their respectability, challenge stereotypes, and navigate oppressive social structures.Nuanced and expansive, The Operatic Kaleidoscope explores opera's role when popular culture grappled with questions of race and citizenship.

Opera and popular entertainment intersected at the turn of the twentieth century just as Americans debated the terms of citizenship. Kristen M. Turner disentangles the intertwined histories of race, class, gender, culture, and musical style to explain opera's place in the mass culture of the ragtime era.Turner examines performances ranging from Florenz Ziegfeld's early Follies to Black vaudeville shows to musical comedies, including everything from celebrity vehicles to obscure productions and overlooked artists. She reveals how opera's popularity in mass culture illuminates the effects of exclusionary immigration policies, pervasive racial and ethnic inequalities, debates over women's suffrage, and the imposition of legalized segregation. Performers and creators from many communities—white immigrants, Jewish, Black, and Asian American—strategically deployed operatic allusions and the genre's characteristic vocal timbre to assert their respectability, challenge stereotypes, and navigate oppressive social structures.Nuanced and expansive, The Operatic Kaleidoscope explores opera's role when popular culture grappled with questions of race and citizenship.

Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher’s Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help instructors include women and people of color in the typical music history survey course and the foundational music theory classes. This book provides a reconceptualization of the principles that shape the decisions instructors should make when crafting the syllabus. It offers new perspectives on canonical composers and pieces that take into account musical, cultural, and social contexts where women and people of color are present. Secondly, it suggests new topics of study and pieces by composers whose work fits into a more inclusive narrative of music history. A thematic approach parallels the traditional chronological sequencing in Western music history classes. Three themes include people and communities that suffer from various kinds of exclusion: Locales & Locations; Forms & Factions; Responses & Reception. Each theme is designed to uncover a different cultural facet that is often minimized in traditional music history classrooms but which, if explored, lead to topics in which other perspectives and people can be included organically in the curriculum, while not excluding canonical composers.