Abstract: I See the Horse is a fantasy novel that follows the adventures of Komar Voorhexees of Port Karpricius during a time of civil war within The Ten Kingdoms of the Enlibar Empire. The primary focus or super objective of the novel centers on the pursuit of a religious artifact, The Tear of Vashanka, and the delivery of documents important to the war cause.
The novel follows story telling lessons from Twain, Vonnegut, Robert Mckee, and Orson Scott Card. The novel also mixes elements from canonical masters such as Homer, Shakespeare, and Joyce with genre-champions such as J.R.R. Tolkien, R.E. Howard, and G.R.R. Martin, as well as components of heavy metal music. The result lies squarely between the subgenres of Sword and Sorcery and High (Epic) Fantasy. The first six chapters fit into the Sword and Sorcery category; whereas, the second dives into Epic Fantasy as the protagonist slowly becomes part of the bigger milieu.
The novel was created to have an original, gritty, realistic world with an American feel and flavor and a fantasy city drenched in the culture of the American South. To create a fantasy novel with an American feel was the projects initial purpose and drive. This is accomplished by drawing heavily upon the author’s life and experience.

Abstract: This dissertation offers a cultural history of the 1980s through an examination of one of the decade’s most memorable cultural forms—hair metal. The notion that hair metal musicians, and subsequently their fans, wanted “nothin’ but a good time,” shaped popular perceptions of the genre as shallow, hedonistic, and apolitical. Set against the backdrop of Reagan’s election and the rise of conservatism throughout the decade, hair metal’s transgressive nature embodied in the performers’ apparent obsession with partying and their absolute refusal to adopt the traditional values and trappings of “yuppies” or middle-class Americans, certainly appeared to be a strong reaction against conservatism; however, a closer examination of hair metal as a cultural form reveals a conservative subtext looming beneath the genre’s transgressive façade. In its embrace of traditional gender roles, free market capitalism, and American exceptionalism, hair metal upheld and worked to re-inscribe the key tenants of conservative ideology.
Historians have only recently turned an analytical eye toward the 1980s and by and large their analyses have focused on the political and economic changes wrought by the Reagan Revolution that competed America’s conservative turn over the course of the decade. This study adds to historical understandings of the decade’s political history by telling us how non-political actors—musicians, producers, critics, and fans—shaped and were shaped by the currents of formal politics. Though heavy metal music and the rise of conservatism seem to share little common ground, by putting these two seemingly disparate historiographies into conversation with one another, we gain a clearer picture of the breadth and depth of conservatism’s reach in the 1980s.

Abstract: The Southern Metal scene depends heavily on the performance of a Southern Identity. While considerable research has been done on other musical genres and scenes from the American South (country music, blues, gospel music), less attention has been given to the extreme metal scene of Southern Metal. Using scholarship of Nadine Hubbs, Philip Auslander, Jefferey C. Alexander, and Keith Kahn Harris, among others, I analyze two films, Slow Southern Steel (2010) and NOLA: Life, Death, and Heavy Blues from the Bayou (2014), and one song, Down’s “Eyes of the South” as cultural productions of this Southern Metal scene. In this project, I define the musical elements and scene ethos of Southern Metal as they relate to a wider, more mainstream American audience and describe how these identities and cultural forms are produced, negotiated, and embodied.

Abstract: Nicodemus! The Beds are Burning Again: The Ascension of Gorgomath is a 22-minute concerto for piano and chamber orchestra that explores the use of narrative as a means of unifying disparate musical languages into a cohesive single-movement structure. The narrative, as implied by the fourteen programmatic indicators within the score, features a protagonist, Nicodemus, and an antagonist, Gorgomath. Additional contrasting elements essential to the plot are: the burning beds, outer space, the ultimate weapon, and the three rituals. The programmatic indicators, to be listed in the program, function as a framework from which the listener can fabricate their own version of the story.
The narrative begins with “The beds are burning,” a heavy-metal inspired musical theme characterized by a pervasive rhythmic structure interspersed with virtuosic piano displays. Full orchestral forces add to the intensity of a relentless motor rhythm heard first in the piano. Following “Ritual I,” a transitionary theme of soli strings and piano, Nicodemus’s theme develops, a musical antithesis to “The Burning Beds” theme. It employs a simple melodic loop over a basic four-chord harmonic structure, reminiscent of 8-bit video game themes, and is voiced as piano accompanied by tremolo in the woodwinds and strings.
Nicodemus’s journey into space begins with a rapid deceleration in tempo. The following slow ternary form includes a funerary dirge bookended by the piece’s most lyrical piano writing, expressed by the rise and fall of melodic octaves. The pounding neo-Shostakovian strings of “Ritual II” transition directly into the development section, “Nicodemus seeks the ultimate weapon.” Nicodemus’s theme undergoes significant transformation, assuming the guise of stride piano and North Indian tabla music. These styles are unique to this section, as is their orchestration of high, sustained winds alternating with orchestral hits between low strings and percussion.
The piece’s recapitulation, “Meanwhile…,” begins with a return of the burning beds. Here, “Gorgomath’s Theme,” identifiable by the instability of its 7/16 motor rhythm is briefly foreshadowed. It appears in its entirety in the coda, “Boss Battle.”
The resulting work uses original narrative to blend polystylistic elements into a cohesive single movement structure with a dramatic musical arc.

Abstract: The first objective of this work was to review the existing literature relating to popular music analysis to determine if standards of harmonic practice within hard rock and heavy metal music have been considered and established. This led to the review of the analytical methods of Guy Capuzzo, Christopher Doll, Walter Everett, Allen Moore, and Ken Stephenson. For the needs of this study, Everett's work (and to a lesser degree, Stephenson's work) is primary as it best summarizes the harmonic schemes used in the pieces analyzed.
Three songs were selected within different subgenres of hard rock and heavy metal: thrash metal (Metallica, “Master of Puppets”), neo-classical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen, “Far Beyond the Sun”), and commercial hard rock (Guns-N-Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle”). These pieces were analyzed extensively to understand the primary harmonic resources that are at work in each. Additionally, the three pieces were compared with regard to their formal elements, melodic materials, texture, and dynamics to draw conclusions about what similarities they share and also how they differ. Depending on the piece and the section under consideration, these three examples exhibited a reliance on modal structures, blues-based materials, and common-practice influences.