My career as an academic researcher has been largely defined by scholarship on the intersection of extremism and music. Below are several upcoming pieces as well as notable recent publications.

















                   Radicalism and Music (2015)                                                  Sound Targets (2009)



Upcoming


"The Islamic State as Social Movement Organization and the Concept of Protest in its Anashid."​


Forthcoming in Oxford Handbook of Protest Music (Oxford University Press), edited by Noriko Manabe and Eric Drott.


This book chapter conceptualizes the Islamic State as a social movement organization and explores the concept of protest in its anashid (“Islamic chant/recitation”). It outlines the ways in which IS’s media propaganda can be understood through the lenses of framing and emotion in social movement studies. 



"Emotion, White-Power Music, and the Turn to Extremism". 


This article explores the variable of emotion in the context of extremism. Building upon understandings of emotion through the lens of Social Movement Studies (SMS), it analyses emotion within the lyrics and musical-sonic aspects of white-power movement music. The article concludes with a brief assessment of how emotion, as mediated through music, represents a thread interwoven among a variety of disciplinary perspectives that are relevant to the study of extremism.




Selected Recent Publications
"Trends of Anashid Usage in Da‘esh Video Messaging and Implications for Identifying Terrorist Audio and Video". Jonathan Pieslak, Brian Pieslak, Anthony Lemieux. Studies in Conflict in Terrorism 44/4: 310-25. 



"Multimodal visual/sound redundancy in ISIS videos: a close analysis of martyrdom and training segments". Carol Winkler & Jonathan Pieslak. Journal of Policing, Intelligence, and Counter Terrorism 13/3: 345-60. 



"The Anashid of the Islamic State: History, Influence, Text, and Sound". Jonathan Pieslak & Nelly Lahoud. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 43/4: 274-99. 





An oldie but a goodie :) ...


"Re-casting Metal: Rhythm and Meter in the Music of Meshuggah". Jonathan Pieslak. Music Theory Spectrum 29/2: 219-45. 
 





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Jonathan Pieslak


Academic Researcher