Drawing attention to the Anthropocene as both proposed geological epoch and discourse about the Earth’s future, the Introduction examines the Anthropocene’s challenge to the value of literature and literary criticism and the opportunity it offers to reinvigorate both. It works from and summarises the chapters in the book while highlighting arguments and perspectives from Anthropocene studies in literature and environmental humanities. Citing diverse writers, it argues that literature can deploy its unique practices (narrative, poetics, etc.) and faculty for imagining the future towards an understanding of humans’ interconnection with the Earth that the Anthropocene demands; and that it can best do so by adapting and evolving those practices towards sharing divergent experiences (e.g. stories of people and species disseminated online) and, via (say) experimental poetry or elongated narrative, relating human beings to exponentially vaster scales: deep history, Earth, the distant future. The Introduction concludes with a case study of Chile which underlines literature's and culture’s value in mediating the complex social, cultural and ontological questions that the Anthropocene poses.

Early in the nineteenth century, the planetary Earth emerged as a new object of fascination across the Western world, upending Biblical authority and intertwining the once-separate orders of human and natural history. The industrial and imperial energies released by the emergence of Earth into human consciousness launched chains of causality leading to the Anthropocene, chains that bind us to this earlier era even as the Anthropocene cuts us off from its grounding assumptions. As natural scientists from Buffon and Hutton to Humboldt, Lyell and Darwin elaborated Earth’s evolutionary development and the ecological interdependences of living systems, political economists wrestled with the resulting problem: Do human beings have planetary agency? Their epochal decision to admit such agency in theory even while denying it in practice would bequeath us an unresolved legacy of metaphysical terror – as well as a role for literary artists in reimagining the horizon of the human.

Romantic nature writing emerges at roughly the same time as the industrial innovations that will eventually lead to global carbon capitalism and therefore is for some scholars coeval with the birth of the Anthropocene. This chapter takes a genealogical approach to the Anthropocene by suggesting that there are significant continuities between Romantic literature and contemporary discourses on environmental catastrophe. Focusing on two case studies – William Cowper’s The Task and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, both of which responded to climate change caused by volcanic eruptions – this chapter shows how Romantic writers address what it means to be alive at a catastrophic turning point in planetary history. They are concerned with the power of the human imagination to shape its environments, yet also with our vulnerability to elemental forces that we may affect but that we cannot control.

Welcome to the Cambridge Companion to the Drum Kit. We are delighted to share this first of its kind text, an edited volume dedicated solely to scholarly consideration of the drum kit. This brief introduction to the Companion provides background on the work’s origins, discussion of its potential import, an explanation of the volume’s organization, introductions to the individual authors and chapters, and suggestions for how readers might use the text.

This essay will analyze the Jesus tradition in the Apostolic Fathers in light of recent debates on the relationship between orality and textuality in antiquity. Specifically, it will analyze the Jesus tradition in the Apostolic Fathers as oral tradition, given that it almost certainly derived from an oral-traditional source. This approach reflects a scholarly paradigm-shift that has been gaining momentum over the last three decades in studying the interplay of orality and textuality in early Christian circles. Prior to this paradigm-shift one could say with Werner H. Kelber that historical biblical scholarship was “empowered by an inadequate theory of the art of communication in the ancient world.” The paradigm-shift involves taking seriously that early Christianity arose and spread within societies that were predominantly oral. Not that attention to oral tradition is something new; New Testament scholars appealed to it for centuries, for example, in debating the sources and historical reliability of the canonical Gospels. Relatively recent, however, are the many insights into the inner workings of oral tradition in antiquity provided by a newer generation of scholars, many of whom built upon the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. These new insights are reshaping our understanding of the role of oral Jesus tradition in the early Christian community, and causing us to rethink the impact of orality and textuality upon early Christian writings and their sources.

Writing in the fourth century, Eusebius puts forward what may be regarded as the traditional story of Ignatius of Antioch. Little is said of his birth or early life. Eusebius’ account begins in earnest with the apparent arrest of Ignatius in Syria or, more specifically, in Antioch. Ignatius is then forced to travel with a cohort guarding him overland through Asia. While in Smyrna and Troas, he wrote seven letters: five to nearby communities of believers in western Asia (Ephesians; Magnesians; Trallians; Philadelphians; Smyrnaeans), one to believers in Rome (Romans), and one to a fellow ecclesial leader named Polycarp (Polycarp). In his Letter to Polycarp, Ignatius says that he would like to write more but is unable to do so because he is being forced to sail on to Neapolis (Ign. Pol. 8.1). This is the last that is heard from Ignatius himself. To follow the story to the end we must consult documents that postdate Ignatius’ letters. These end with Ignatius’ death by the beasts that he had earlier hoped would become his tomb (Ign. Rom. 4.2).

Jazz music has long been understood as a generational practice, one where older musicians mentor, encourage, and teach younger, aspiring players. That tradition of tutelage is evident in the long lineages of musicians who have graduated from the ensembles of noted bandleaders. Historical examples include Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. In this chapter, the author considers mentoring as it relates to two drum kit players; Jack DeJohnette, a major figure in the history of jazz drumming and a bandleader recognized for nurturing younger musicians, and Terri Lyne Carrington, a premiere figure in contemporary jazz drumming and a celebrated leader of ensembles that feature young, developing musicians. The chapter is organized according to four broad themes: (a) the importance of mentors; (b) challenges of learning to play the drum kit; (c) the unique place and space of drummers; and (d) ‘something bigger than just the music’. Those themes emerged during a series of interviews with the two participants and in qualitative analysis of the participant thoughts, statements, and expressions.

Papias of Hierapolis flourished in the early second century and wrote five books of Exposition of Dominical Oracles (logiōn kyriakōn exēgēseōs), of which only scattered quotations from his readers survive, including Irenaeus, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Andrew of Caesarea. Among these excerpts, we learn that Papias was commended by Irenaeus as a hearer of John and a colleague of Polycarp. Eusebius mentions him too for his testimony on the origin of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, and this is the main reason why Papias holds our interest today. Yet his materialistic views about the millennial kingdom of Christ fell out of favor in the third century and ultimately led to the loss of his magnum opus. The largest edition of his remains to date is that of M.W. Holmes, which has twenty-eight separate “fragments” of Papias, though my forthcoming edition for the Oxford Early Christian Texts series will have more than triple the number of items.

When rock and roll exploded onto the American cultural mainstream in the 1950s, enthusiasts and detractors alike identified the backbeat as the most distinctive and captivating feature of this controversial ‘new’ music. Although it shocked many, the backbeat soon became ubiquitous, and it remains among the most prevalent features in contemporary popular music around the globe. Long before the rock and roll revolution, backbeating had a rich history in the performance of African-American music, dance, worship, labour, and sexuality. This chapter establishes the backbeat as a pervasive and powerful manifestation of signifyin(g), as theorized by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, a strategic form of cultural production that responds to, reinterprets, and builds upon received texts or expressions to expose, challenge, and invert the hierarchies they (re)produce. The origins of the backbeat are traced to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African-American musical traditions – including worship music, prison songs, early jazz, and hokum blues – and its early history is charted through a critical survey of recordings from the 1920s to the 1950s. This history reveals that the backbeat often functioned as a means of resisting oppressive social structures and forging group solidarity, and it illuminates how and why the backbeat became a central convention of drum kit performance practice.

The drum kit is most commonly considered an instrument rooted in popular music traditions and is a defining element of most popular music styles. In recent years the drum kit has emerged in the unlikely context of contemporary classical music. As a result, there is an expanding repertoire of fully notated music by composers operating within the framework of Western classical music notational traditions. This chapter illuminates the influence that the drum kit has had on classical music since the early twentieth century and presents an overview of composed works starting with Darius Milhuad’s La Créations du Monde from 1923 and ending with Nicole Lizée’s Ringer from 2009. The chapter shows that early approaches to drum kit composition began as an assimilation of existing popular music styles with little progression in performance techniques and expression for the instrument. More recently composers have found a balance between contemporary classical music techniques and the drum kit’s rich traditions, grooves, and styles to make something progressive and new. Through the author, Ben Reimer’s, own commissioning, performances, and research the chapter contemplates the elements that lead to this confluence in contemporary classical drum kit music

Polycarp was an important Christian leader of the first half of the second century. Although he wrote many letters, only one has survived – his Epistle to the Philippians (Pol. Phil.). A narrative of his death is also extant, the Martyrdom of Polycarp (Mart. Pol.). Collections of the Apostolic Fathers have consistently included both works. Hill and Beatrice have argued that Polycarp stands behind various traditions from “the elder” cited by Irenaeus. A canon list ascribes a Didaskalia to Polycarp.

What does it mean to build digital worlds in the Anthropocene? Despite their compromised provenance, computer and video games offer a potent avenue for designing and partaking in environmental scenarios. As a review of the varied approaches to ludic world design suggests, differences in opinion as to who or what constitutes a viable game world – broadly speaking, designers, players, software or spaces – bear on environmental impasses in our shared world, which is marked by multispecies entanglements and obligations. If the essence of world-building lies primarily not in a singular, authorial intent or vision but in a collective imagining and realisation, then designed worlds may serve as both inspirations and cautionary tales for our ecologically compromised times.

In this chapter we examine the intersection of drumming and disability by foregrounding the experiences of drummer and co-author Cornel Hrisca-Munn, who describes his disability as multi-limb deficient. Commencing with a discussion of concepts from the field of disability studies, we explain how drumming exposes the inadequacy of either/or medical- and social-model thinking. Nuanced understandings of lived experiences help to make sense of disability theory, and we use examples from Cornel’s life as a drummer to highlight the importance of complexity and context. We proceed with a narrative by Cornel on how he has experienced others’ perceptions of him through his online presence on internet and social media platforms. Cornel’s experiences of being the object of others’ inspiration porn or trolling on social media highlight how difficult it is for him to be regarded solely as a drummer; instead, he is compartmentalized as a ‘disabled drummer’. Following, we provide a detailed description of how Cornel plays the song ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters to illustrate that how people see Cornel play drums changes how they hear him play drums. Finally, Cornel details how he is often compared to Rick Allen of Def Leppard, and explains why this comparison is problematic.

In this autoethnographic essay, the author – a drummer – describes how he derives meaning from playing the drum kit. He presents accounts of playing drums both alone and in the context of an original rock band. Drawing from existing scholarship on aesthetic experience and meaning in music making, the author argues that while he plays drums often in a state of flow, it may be unhelpful to construe this – as others have done – as music making for its own sake. Rather than positioning his drumming as autotelic or intrinsically worthwhile, the author explains how he plays for the fulfilment derived therefrom, as part of a life lived in search of eudaimonia – flourishing both individually and as part of a community. Drumming in these contexts is, the author argues, a locus of spirituality, understood through the lenses of embodiment, authenticity, and personal agency as a form of success. Playing drums – for this drummer – provides a connection to, and a window into, his soul.

It was the culmination of a months-long legislative fight, not to mention some eighty years of swirling allegations about Catholic sexual deviance, when the local sheriff and health commissioner arrived at St. Joseph Academy in remote Mena, Arkansas, where Catholics represented a tiny minority of the population. The county officials entered the school under authority bestowed by the state’s new Convent Inspection Act of 1915, designed to end the rumored practice of Catholic institutions harboring girls for the sexual gratification, as one enraged Arkansan put it, of a “lecherous bunch” of priests.1 Discovering no evidence of crime or malfeasance among the several Sisters of Mercy and the small number of female students at the school, the sheriff, evidently impressed by his hosts, apologized to them and promised to return for a social visit with his wife. Meanwhile, elected officials in Georgia successfully installed a similar law aimed at routing out Catholic perversion, and legislators in seven other states – from Iowa to Oregon to Minnesota – debated their own versions of a convent inspection bill. Together, these largely forgotten efforts at policing sexual activity in Catholic institutions hint at how significant and controversial Catholicism has been in the history of gender and sexuality in the United States.