Topic for Fall 2024: Expressing Race and Gender through New Music

This course takes its spark from recent global and on-campus conversations around race and anti-racism in relation to the arts, particularly music composed and created during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students will become familiar with “canonical works” by (predominantly male, some female, and mostly white Euro-American) composers. However, the primary focus is on the creative achievements of under-represented composers and musicians identifying as Black, Latinx, East Asian, and Native American. This course inverts the balance by privileging the artistic accomplishments of composers and musicians who usually reside at the margins of “central” conversations. Our goal is to understand what the traditional category of “modernism and music” reveals about history and society from typically less represented cultural/racial/gendered perspectives. Students will undertake critical listening/viewing/reading assignments and reflect on live performances through writing.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 18

Prerequisites: MUS 100 or exemption from MUS 100.

Instructor: Russell

Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video

Typical Periods Offered: Spring

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall

Notes: This is a topics course and can be taken more than once for credit as long as the topic is different each time.