Ryan Koons's blog

William Faulkner once famously wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (1950:73). This idea that the past is always present is at the heart of this paper. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and while the cultural constructs of historical eras differ vastly from those of the present, they crucially inform the here and now, being not dead, or even completely past.

The scandal is explicit on the flyleaf: The Castrato and His Wife, and historian Helen Berry weaves an account that fulfills her intriguing choice of title.

Based on ethnographic field research conducted in 2008, this audio essay discusses the integral role of song in the South African anti-apartheid movement (1948-1994) as seen through the eyes of two black women. Gloria Piliso and Nobulumko Bongco, both Xhosa residents of King Williams Town, South Africa, experienced apartheid and participated in the anti-apartheid movement.