Stephan Pennington

Musicologist, Scholar of Popular Culture, Banjoist, Singer, Geek

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

I'm in a documentary about trans jazz musician Billy Tipton called #NoOrdinaryManFilm opening *this Friday, 7/16* from @oscopelabs! Playing at @IFCCenter in NYC & @NuartTheatre in L.A. Ticket sales are crucial for indie documentaries, so get them here: https://t.co/yf7vL6xlit!

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

But also, liner notes lets me see who the audio engineer is, or the cowbell player. It lets me trace less obvious musical kinship networks.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

I am reminded how sad it is that the move to the dominance of digital distribution often means we no longer tend to get liner notes. A moment when the artist gets to make an artist statement linked to the work.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@RissiPalmer I always include your “Country Girl” in my lecture on Black Country in my history of African American Music, and I always will!
And one of these days I’ll have the time to turn that into an academic article. You are important and talented and amazing!

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

Um.
I was booking plane tickets and I have discovered that some airlines now charge for a person to have a carry-on bag. What the nickel and diming is that?!

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@monetxchange I don't know what is happening over on your end, but I'm Dr. of Musicology...so I'll do what I can, which is prescribe listening to music. How about the amazing Betty Davis's "Dedicated to the Press" (1975)
https://t.co/B8857HLDQt

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@CarolineOMeara The Treachery of Lake Houses

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

I participate in Org A not for any benefit to me...because there isn't any, but because there may be grad students who I might be able to benefit and I have a strong sense of service to those who aren't hailed.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

I've been thinking about academic sub-fields. They aren't the work, they are the clique of people who build and maintain the organizational gates. You can write on Opera, but not be recognized as an opera scholar. You can write on pop music but not be included in that community.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

I'm not mad. Because it is what it is. But it does explain the disconnect. Someone once said, "Why would you distance yourself from Organization A, they do so much for their members! You'd lose out on so many opportunities." But Org A has never actually included me.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@noemontez It’s one of the big drawbacks I see I’d remote conferences. Many of the important parts of the conference that happen outside of panels are lost.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

Everyone is worried about students using ChatGPT to write papers: "How will we ever know?" they say. "What shall we do?" they fret. Well, I've caught 2-3 ChatGPT papers so far, and I caught them because ChatGPT is really bad at writing academic papers. It makes up fake things.

[Chris Paukert @CPAutoScribe]

This is terrifying: a marketer pinged me for quote permission — common for a journalist. Only I didn’t recognize the text as something I’d ever said. Pumping it into Google returned nothing.

I asked where he got it: ChatGPT. AI fabricated a quote and attributed it to me.

🧵

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@poestiche Usually Sundays.
I like to self-inject after my morning shower, but I don't like to do it if I'm rushed. So Sunday is usually the day.

[noe montez @noemontez]

Christina Sharpe was among a handful of folks who offered me kindness in my early days at Tufts, and helped me work through some of the white fuckery I encountered in those years. I was so glad to read this profile and can’t wait to read Ordinary Notes

https://t.co/ie66jvtfaR

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@hystericalblkns @noemontez I wouldn’t have made it through my first through years without your presence. You are an important human being.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@A_M_Medina @doctaj Which is really obvious if one reads music scholarship by people with no connection to music studies of any kind.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@A_M_Medina @doctaj Yeah. And…sometimes that is a valid question. But often that is a lack of imagination or overly narrow definition of music. Or lack of recognition how being a music scholar shapes the questions one asks and how one writes even if there is no transcription on the page.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@erupton @doctaj So I see people who do interdisciplinary work in our field publish slower and have a harder time getting tenure than people who never thought to read Foucault (or whomever) and mostly stuck inside their discipline. We punish interdisciplinarity on a structural level.

[Stephan Pennington @stephanPhD]

@erupton @doctaj I still don’t think, in this time when institutions both praise interdisciplinarity and demand an accelerating publication pace and output, they appreciate (or take into account) how much longer it takes to do interdisciplinary work well.