The Rise of Rhythm Studies: Mediating Dimension, Discipline, and Scale

Rhythm is everywhere. Its ability to focus and unify interdisciplinary conversation begs the questions: What is rhythm and can different disciplines agree on its definition? Rhythm studies have emerged as a key background form traversing cultural, natural, and social forms like cognition, communication, and even cosmology. An added boon: this background can seem unifying. Those who explore such entangled phenomena study the throbbing presence of rhythmic, oscillatory, and vibratory potentials: Neuroscientists turn to rhythm for novel explanations of why our cognitive capacities are so limited; physicists use it to cross time and space; scholars in various fields turn to it to rethink materialism and affect theory. This lively collection considers why rhythm currently functions as a form of mediation between disciplines, across widely different scales and dimensions. The Rise of Rhythm Studies tests what rhythm can do through theoretical examinations and in case studies ranging from European literature to topology and media studies to Chinese visual art. Established scholars, such as Nina Kraus, Anna Gibbs, and Caroline Levine, alongside rising scholars in the field, marshal transdisciplinary perspectives in order to understand rhythm as a boundary condition for living in and working through and with the world.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Rise of Rhythm Studies Mark Lussier, Arizona State University, USA, and Richard C. Sha, American University, USA Part I. Theoretical Foundations 1. Between Feltness and Knowing: Fanon, Brain Waves, and the Epistemology of Rhythm Richard C. Sha, American University, USA 2. Rhythm: Inside and Outside the Head Nina Kraus, Northwestern University, USA 3. Rhythmic Operations as Boundary Conditions Mark Lussier, Arizona State University, USA 4. Textual Rhythm and Textual Sense Making Sha Xin Wei, Arizona State University, USA Part II. Social Pulsations 5. Arrythmia: Capitalism's Destruction of Rhythm and Relation Anna Gibbs, Western Sydney University, Australia 6. Rhythm in and of Social Interaction: A Study in Intersubjectivity and Power Chiara Bassetti, University of Trento, Italy 7. Routines of Creativity Caroline Levine, Cornell University, USA Part III. Aesthetic Manifestations 8. The Measures of Fugitive Time Keith D. Leonard, American University, USA 9. Rhythm of the Brushstroke, Rhythm of the Body, and Cosmic Rhythm, through Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Yolaine Escande, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France 10. Reading Rhythm as Translation: Bei Dao's "The Answer" Nick Admussen, Cornell University, USA 11. Rhythms in Painting (1910-1930) Georges Roque, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Mark Lussier is Professor of English and Sustainability and Emeritus College Dean at Arizona State University, USA. Richard C. Sha is Professor of Literature and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at American University, USA.

Review :
This highly interesting book promotes rhythm studies as a much-needed discipline of its own. It explains why rhythm is a main determinant in brain research as well as in Taoism, in aesthetic analyses and in the understanding of social phenomena. Eventually, one way or another, rhythm gets to you (even if you feel that you don't have a sense of rhythm). Rhythm insinuates. It aggregates and disaggregates – sometimes subtly, sometimes shatteringly. Moving across a range of disciplines, this collection operates similarly: at once subtle and shattering.