MUS-T 658  Seminar in Music Theory (3 cr.), section 2 (25406)

Topic:

"Reading Against the Grain":
Music Analysis and Cultural Studies

Instructor: Professor M.C. Kielian-Gilbert

Time/place: 2:30-3:45 p.m. Tues/Thurs, M267 (Simon Building)


	"Reading against the grain" describes practices of "both-and"
reading: an approach to (music) criticism and analysis that is
sensitive to tensions between dominant and subordinate discourses;
absences, omissions, or contradictions; conflicts between multiple
and competing discourses or points of view; and varying relationships
between music and listeners.  "Reading against the grain" --
listening at an 'angle' -- resists marginalizing experience,
rehabilitates submerged identities, and opens the text to new worlds
of relational possibility and positionality, even as these visionary
alternatives are shaped in normative contexts.

	In turn, critical responses to these practices stress reading
for specificities of gender, materiality, and multi-voiced discourse,
incorporating the contingencies of historical understanding,
mediating traditional or assumed dichotomies (high/low,
patriarchy/femininity), and allowing for the critical potential of
identification and empathy.

	The seminar will consider music in different mediums and
contexts (music in film, performative context, popular music, opera,
and dance), in relation to and as a function of different contexts of
reception, and touching on particular themes (modes of listening,
violence, transformation, bodily movement).  Readings will also be
geared to the cross-disciplinary interests of those participating.
Analyses will develop technical and figurative characterizations of
music's expressive effects, correlate these with music listening and
material-social and compositional practices, and think about
connections between theoretical orientation and contemporary
experience (e.g., discontinuity, hypertextuality and technology,
forces of pluralism and globalization).

Text:  Derek B. Scott (Ed.) (2000).  Music, Culture, and Society: A
Reader.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Course:  readings, class discussion, short reaction papers or reports
on issues arising in the readings, major seminar paper and class
presentation.