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 II Introduction George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut I. Cities 1. Improvisation Technology as Mode of Redesigning the Urban Christopher Dell and Ton Matton 2. Lots Will Vary in the Available City David P. Brown 3. Improvising the Future in Post-Katrina New Orleans Eric Porter II. Creativities 4. Billy Connolly, Daniel Barenboim, Willie Wonka, Jazz Bastards, and the Universality of Improvisation Raymond MacDonald and Graeme Wilson 5. A Computationally Motivated Approach to Cognition Studies in Improvisation Brian Magerko 6. A Consciousness-based Look at Spontaneous Creativity Ed Sarath 7. In the Beginning, There Was Improvisation Bruce Ellis Benson III. Musics 8. Landmarks in the Study of Improvisation: Perspectives from Ethnomusicology Bruno Nettl 9. Saving Improvisation: Hummel and the Free Fantasia in the Early Nineteenth Century Dana Gooley 10. Negotiating Freedom and Control in Composition: Improvisation and Its Offshoots, 1950 to 1980 Sabine Feisst 11. Musical Improvisation: Play, Efficacy, and Significance A. J. Racy 12. Improvisation in Freestyle Rap Ellie M. Hisama 13. Speaking of the I-Word Leo Treitler IV. Writings 14. Modernist Improvisations Rob Wallace 15. Diversity and Divergence in the Improvisational Evolution of Literary Genres Jennifer D. Ryan 16. Improvisatory Practices and the Dawn of the New American Cinema Sara Villa 17. Brilliant Corners: Improvisation and Practices of Freedom in Sent for You Yesterday Walton Muyumba 18. Improvisation in Contemporary Experimental Poetry Hazel Smith V. Media 19. Subjective Computing and Improvisation D. Fox Harrell 20. Improvisation and Interaction, Canons and Rules, Emergence and Play Simon Penny 21. Imposture as Improvisation: Living Fiction Antoinette LaFarge 22. Role-Play, Improvisation, and Emergent Authorship Celia Pearce 23. Bodies, Border, Technology: The Promise and Perils of Telematic Improvisation Adriene Jenik 24. She Stuttered: Mapping the Spontaneous Middle Sher Doruff VI. Technologies 25. Live Algorithms for Music: Can Computers Be Improvisers? Michael Young and Tim Blackwell 26. Improvisation of the Masses: Anytime, Anywhere Mobile Music Ge Wang
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).
