WGSS 177
Gender and Sexuality in Music Spring 2020
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed MUS 177
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Class Details

This course explores key themes in the expression of gender and sexuality through music. It draws from primarily 21st century examples, across cultures and genres, ranging from pop boy bands to Indian bhangra dance to the musical avant-garde. Themes will include: communicating gendered ideals, dance and embodiment, transgressive performances, biography and subjectivity, intersectionality, music and sexual violence, and marketing. We will explore the ways in which ideas and identities related to sex and gender are formulated and mobilized in music’s performance and consumption. Inevitably, issues of sound and stagecraft intersect with factors such as race, age, and class, further informing these experiences. Students will consider their own processes of identifying and interpreting expressions of gender and sexuality in sound and movement, and contemplate the role of culture and society in informing those interpretations.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 15
Class#: 3841
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: attendance/participation, short assignments, midterm project, final paper
Prerequisites: open to all students; familiarity with musical terminology is helpful but not required
Enrollment Preferences: WGSS and MUSC majors/prospective majors
Distributions: Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
WGSS 177 Division II MUS 177 Division I
DPE Notes: This course critically examines the ways in which music constructs and reflects gendered and sexual identities in intersectional space. We discuss how normative viewpoints come to be accepted and interpreted as 'natural,' and how musicians and audiences have maneuvered within and against those socio-political expectations. Music and readings span a wide range of sources--elite, popular, counter-cultural; from Euro-American sources to genres hailing from Brazil, Korea, and India.

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