Papers
This is a listing of my more academic work, primarily completed during
my Oberlin years. They are in no particular order, but are roughly organized
by topic.
Music - General
Film Music
Other Research
Philosophy/Religion
Music - General and Miscellaneous
This paper was a challenge to write. I was unable to use the library for
much of my research, I was trying to develop and discuss new techniques
for an instrument I was just learning to play, and I had to convince people
that I was serious about the topic. But, these challenges, though not resulting
in a great paper, improved my internet research skills (and other research
skills), introduced me to many people, resulted in a decent musical composition,
and ended up introducing the pedal steel to several people.
This paper summarizes my work in a Private Reading (term for supervised,
independent study for credit) of the same title and subject. It includes,
towards the end, a summary of a piece I wrote using some of my research.
I was in a new class called "New Media Collaborations" in the Fall of 1998,
and it was quite a class - artists, dancers, musician/composers, all in
the same room, working together. We also did several projects outside of
the classroom, art projects ranging from videos to performance art, to
installations. I was even in a group that organized a "tour" of the campus
(with all sorts of art installations, a puppet show, music - a huge, intense
experience for all involved). One of the goals of the class was developing
collaborative skills - basically learning to do art with other people on
the same project. I thought a good, related topic to study would be Madonna
- her career owes a lot to her ability to collaborate, and to her skill
in picking collaborators.
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Film Music
A paper about the history of electronic film music.
A research into the techniques used by modern film composers, primarily
other than the John Williams genre. I love John Williams's work, but he
is not typical of what's out there; in fact, his work is almost reactionary.
Also, though I focus on modern techniques, I also focus in on some people
(like Max Steiner) who developed the modern techniques, even though many
people would not consider some of the works studied and cited entirely
modern. I also quote and borrow ideas a lot from Earle Hagen. But I feel
this is fine because I shift the focus in my paper to a few particular
composers and the techniques that they used. Sometime these composers were
not discussed by Hagen (possibly because of when the book was written),
and often the techniques these composers used were not discussed, at least
not in any depth.
A comparison between Indian (Hindi, Tamil) and American film music, dealing
with purpose, style, and techniques. This document is relatively web-friendly,
and I will be updating some of the external links in the near future.
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Other Research
This is a research report about the record company PolyGram, formerly a
subsidiary of Seagram's. This was written while the merger between PolyGram
and Universal was still being discussed, but was expected to happen, too.
Consequently, I treated PolyGram as separate from Universal (which it was)
but talked about some effects of the upcoming merger. This was my first
report involving analysis of the business dealings of a company.
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Philosophy and Religion
I feel that it is somewhat important to know my religious views when reading
the papers below, particularly the one on Gender in the Bible. I am a Christian
with a fundamentalist background, who is no longer fundamentalist. I define
Christian fundamentalist in this situation as being a person who takes
the Bible literally as the direct, undefiled, unedited, untouched-by-human-hands
word of God. Now I consider myself to be an Ecumenical Christian - which to me means multi-denominational and open-minded, yet Christ centered in my personal faith. The Bible is still a very important book to me. But now I am much more sensitive to interpretation, perspective, and context.
In anything I do, I try to hold myself to a high standard of logic and reasonableness. I hope this is evident in my papers. However, every person has their beliefs and biases. Did my beliefs predispose me to certain conclusions in my philisophical thoughts? Probably so, but I still tried to guard against that.
This paper defends an argument presented by St. Anselm proving the existence
of God. Though his argument is widely regarded as the work of a genius,
most philosophers find some (usually one or two) serious flaws. I feel
this is a good paper, though I do have one weak spot - when I wrote this,
I had not really dealt with the issues of free will, chance, determinism,
etc. In this paper, I used "freedom" as a word meaning free will, and based
a large portion of my argument on it without even realizing that my views
on free will were still relatively controversial. Thankfully, in a later
paper on determinism, I developed an argument supporting Soft Determinism,
which I believe supports my opinions on free will.
Do we control our own actions, or are all of our decisions just the results
of past incidents which are beyond our control? Is the answer somewhere
in between? Where does chance fit in?
My teacher had some "issues" with this paper, but I still think it is one
of my better ones. Sort of answers the questions: What is real? and Can
something exist if it is not perceived?
the debate continues - Can machines think? Or, will machines ever be able
to understand in a way similar to humans?
This is my most religious paper to date, inspired by a discussion at my
weekly Ecumenical Christians of Oberlin meeting. I discuss sexism in the
New Testament, showing that yes, the Bible itself tends to be sexist, and
even Paul comes across as sexist, but it is extremely difficult (I think
impossible) to find Jesus guilty of sexism, even when the books about him
are.
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Christopher.Goodman.net
email: Christopher@Goodman.net
