Round-up of Dissertations #1

Opening Ramble

Welp. This wasn’t initially one of the subjects I was intending for my first meaningful post on this site. But I wanted to give you something a teensy bit better than that whiny welcome post. Everything else I kept thinking of would require just a bit more time to complete than I had on hand. As a result, those posts have been put aside for now. Thus, here is round-up of dissertations.

For that reason, I decided to check out some free online databases for academic publications. Thus, I rounded up a couple of peer-reviewed papers about The Beatles. I suspect many people will still wrinkle their noses at this, but so be it. Let’s face it: I’m indeed a huge nerd. I’ve got it in my head that a mission of this blog will be to get this type of info to the masses a bit more easily.

Regardless of the circumstances, I intend to actually read and discuss what I had found at some point. Hopefully, that will ideally make things a bit more palatable to many (unless I end up going above people’s heads, too). But reading these articles would take even more time than preparing a post around one of the initial ideas I had. In any case, here are nine free articles I have located and have linked to for your convenience. (I have alphabetized the articles by the authors’ last names.)

Papers I Have Found

Genre and parody in the music of the Beatles. Connolly, Michael. 2015. University of British Columbia. https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0167202.
Editorial Note: Kind of interesting that this paper only seems to touch upon material from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album. The title gave me the impression that a wider span of music was being examined. Sorry if it seems like I’m minimalizing Mr. Connolly’s efforts. Regardless of the subject, writing research papers is a huge task.

Psychedelic Orientalism: representations of India in the music of the Beatles. Cunningham, Trent. 2012. University of Pittsburgh. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10746.
Editorial Note: This could either be really interesting. Or conversely, it could be a rehash of stuff that has already been touched upon. I guess I’ll find out eventually.

“Who wants tradition in the Beatle generation?”: Ravi Shankar, the Indian press, and the cultural politics of reception, 1966-68. Stockill, Zachary Francis. 2013. University of British Columbia. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/44404.
Editorial Note: Without a doubt, of all of the papers I have gathered for this post, the subject of this one intrigues me the most. Partly because it touches upon a specific subject that I don’t hear the Beatles fandom talk about much, if any.

Come Together: A Compositional Analysis of The Beatles’ Abbey Road Album. Gutman, Patrick Scott. 2019. University of California. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15t9f8kr.
Editorial Note: No offense to Mr. Gutman… The subject of this paper seems like a typical research paper about an influential rock band from 1960s. In spite of that, I’ll probably eat these words when I actually read this paper…

The Evolution of the Lyrics of The Beatles as a Social Function within the Popular Culture. King, Leslie. 2020. Georgia State University. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses/256.
Editorial Note: I hope this isn’t going to be another instance of someone not being assed enough to dig into George’s content. That often takes more effort as a result of people not being assed enough to dig into his stuff earlier. (I apologize in advance, but you are absolutely going to hear this sort of complaint a lot around here.)

“Running like big daft girls.” A multi-method study of representations of and
reflections on men and masculinities through “The Beatles”. King, Martin S. 2009. University of Huddersfield. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.523773.
Editorial Note: I actually have a textbook by this author linked on the Book and Idea List. From the top of my head, I’m not sure if this paper or the textbook was written first.

The PR of the U.K. invasion: a historical case study of the Beatles’ 1964 U.S. tour. Sadlier, Richard J. 2012. Ball State University. https://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/handle/123456789/196154.
Editorial Note: I’m curious exactly what the author touches upon. If he discusses media bias that happened during this period, that would be cool. In any case, I don’t think that gets addressed enough. For instance, you still find people taking things from this reporting as being gospel. I hate to say it, but it tends to be the ones who grew up during this time who are horrid about that.

The visual language of authenticity: mediation and musical performance in the films of the Beatles. Schneider, Paula. 2015. University of British Columbia. https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0135635.
Editorial Note: I keep reading “mediation” as “meditation.” I’m more than certain that A Hard Day’s Night didn’t even contain any meditation, lol.

Beatles for sale: the role and significance of storytelling in the commercialisation and cultural branding of the Beatles since 1970. Tessler, Holly Susan. 2009. University of Liverpool. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.510946.
Editorial Note: This is another subject that I could see either bringing up points that people have long neglected. Or it could be a rehash of what people repeat.

In Close…

All of these articles were sourced from EBSCO Dissertations or EThOS. There is a ton more that I can pull from both of these databases. (Also, you can sign up for both of these for free without needing an e-mail address affiliated with a college or university!) In addition to these, there are plenty of other databases for me to comb, too.

I would’ve hosted these articles on my server, but I know that there are copyrights and rules at play that complicate matters. (Therefore, I do not want to get my hosting revoked.) I’m thinking of adding another page to the blog’s menu that discusses databases you can search for papers and articles of this type. Despite what anyone else thinks, I find these sorts of things interesting.