Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, film, gender studies, history, linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others.
Preface to Volume I Introduction George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut I. Cognitions 1. Cognitive Processes in Musical Improvisation Roger Dean and Freya Bailes 2. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Improvisation Aaron L. Berkowitz 3. Improvisation, Action Understanding, and Music Cognition With and Without Bodies Vijay Iyer 4. The Ghost in the Music, or The Perspective of an Improvising Ant David Borgo II. Critical Theories 5. The Improvisative Tracy McMullen 6. jurisgenerative grammar (for alto) Fred Moten 7. Is Improvisation Present? Michael Gallope 8. Politics as Hypergestural Improvisation in the Age of Mediocracy Yves Citton 9. On the Edge: A Frame of Analysis for Improvisation Davide Sparti 10. The Salmon of Wisdom: On the Consciousness of Self and Other in Improvised Music and In the Language that Sets One Free Alexandre Pierrepont 11. Improvising Yoga Susan Leigh Foster III. Cultural Histories 12. Michel de Montaigne, or Philosophy as Improvisation Timothy Hampton 13. The Improvisation of Poetry, 1750-1850: Oral Performance, Print Culture, and the Modern Homer Angela Esterhammer 14. Germaine de Staël's Corinne, or Italy and the Early Usage of Improvisation in English Erik Simpson 15. Improvisation, Time, and Opportunity in the Rhetorical Tradition Glyn P. Norton 16. Improvisation, Democracy, and Feedback Daniel Belgrad IV. Mobilities 17. Improvised Dance in the Reconstruction of THEM Danielle Goldman 18. Improvising Social Exchange: African American Social Dance Thomas F. DeFrantz 19. Fixing Improvisation: Copyright and African American Vernacular Dancers in the Early Twentieth Century Anthea Kraut 20. Performing Gender, Race, and Power in Improv Comedy Amy Seham 21. Shifting Cultivation as Improvisation Paul Richards V. Organizations 22. Improvisation in Management Paul Ingram and Bill Duggan 23. Free Improvisation as a Path-Dependent Process Jared Burrows and Clyde G. Reed VI. Philosophies 24. Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Music Philip Alperson 25. Improvisation and Time-Consciousness Gary Peters 26. Improvising Impromptu, Or, What to Do with a Broken String Lydia Goehr 27. Ensemble Improvisation, Collective Intention, and Group Attention Garry L. Hagberg 28. Interspecies Improvisation David Rothenberg 29. Spiritual Exercises, Improvisation, and Moral Perfectionism: With Special Reference to Sonny Rollins Arnold I. Davidson 30. Improvisation and Ecclesial Ethics Samuel Wells
George E. Lewis, Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and author of the award-winning 2008 book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Benjamin Piekut, Associate Professor of Music at Cornell University, writes on the history of experimental and improvised music after 1960. He is the author of Experimentalism Otherwise (2011) and editor of Tomorrow Is the Question (2014).
