The experimental setup at Morgan’s Lab is designed to generate a neutral atomic or molecular beam, which is then excited with a finely tuned laser to Rydberg states; the highest quantized energy states the electron can be in before ionization. By utilizing the tunable laser we can generate absorption spectra of these Rydberg atoms and molecules. Hidden within these spectra are the quantum and classical dynamics of the electron. This study of Rydberg’s electron dynamics will play a vital role in the analysis and testing of models like semi-classical and quantum theory. This is due to the fact that the Rydberg electron spends very little time near the core of the atom and mostly is present far away from the core, where we can neglect the perturbations of the core. As a result we need not explicitly integrate the motion of the core electrons but rather can treat them as perturbations. The dynamics of such an electron will add proof for existing atomic theories and also find applications in condensed matter physics.

The acceptance and transformation of the Tusia xylophone into a new local tradition can be viewed as the latest step in the formation of Sambla ethnic identity. As an ethnic group, the Sambla were formed by a series of processes that began when they separated from the Samogo populations, became geographically isolated, and began to absorb various foreign people, practices, and belief systems into their community, unifying themselves by their link to the land under a sacred earth chief. The creation of the baan tradition was another step in their process of identity creation, as it became an essential element to all ritual and social events and the center of Sambla musical life.

Music of the baan is complex and multifaceted, and it employs a speech surrogate system that is capable of extemporaneous speech both within the performance of a song and during interludes between songs in which spectators engage in conversation with the soloist, who responds with musical speech on the baan. The speech surrogate mimics the tonal and rhythmic contour of spoken Sambla, and it must fit within the melodic and modal context of the particular song in which the speech is played. The tonal, modal, and multi-dimensional rhythmic and metric facets of the music are explored in the musical analysis.

White Americans made diverse but hegemonically guided meanings from experiences framed by white nativist and other dominant discourses. In contexts fraught with anti-Asian racism, ideas about music, race, the voice, and the body could support belief in a dangerous (male) "yellow peril" or a safely distant, aestheticized (female) orient of kimono and fans. Reinscribing such tropes along with narratives of exclusion or assimilation, performance gave deceptively compelling support to typologies of difference.

Naturalizing rhetorics of authenticity suffused European American responses to Tamaki Miura and other Japanese sopranos performing "Madame Butterfly" and to Asian Americans in vaudeville. Many listeners heard Tomijiro Asai's oratorio excerpts as singing his assimilation. Notions of mimetic skill underpinned reviews of white orientalist performers. Blanche Bates and Walker Whiteside recounted experiential grounds for their yellowface techniques. Pantomimes, operettas, martial arts, and society balls fostered children's and adults' amateur mimesis. The ta-tao, an ostensibly Chinese social dance, offered an antidote to tango-induced moral panic. Orientalism in popular music could promise exotic alternatives to the supposed dangers of African American practices or hybrid novelty with "jazz" gestures.

Some white performers sang orientality through mimetic practices examined as "yellowvoice." Sheet music supported domestic singing, and recordings document professional acts ranging from comedy monologues to fox-trot choruses. Musical aspects of silent cinema exhibition supported orientalist spectatorship of works including Griffith's "Broken Blossoms"; some presented scenes of music-making. Hollywood film scoring and other recent practices often echo earlier acts. This interdisciplinary work offers connections to Ethnomusicology, American Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies.