MUS 230
Musical Ethnography
Last Offered Spring 2016
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

Music provides a constant accompaniment to most of our lives, from mundane activities to personal or collective moments of celebration and grief. Often, we experience music’s impact on us without fully considering how it shapes our ideas and experiences. Drawing on ethnomusicology, anthropology, and related fields, this course explores how music can illuminate people’s practices of being-in-the-world. Musical ethnography describes both the means by which scholars pursue this line of questioning, and also the written work that results from such an investigation. This course features a hands-on approach to musical ethnography. Students will each conduct ethnographic fieldwork in a musical community within Williamstown and the surrounding area. Coursework will survey approaches to methodology (modes and degrees of researcher involvement, practical skills related to documentation), issues of ethics, and social and musical analysis.
The Class: Format: seminar; lecture/discussion
Limit: 10
Expected: 6
Class#: 3624
Grading: no pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: class participation, small assignments (four 1-2 page assignments), interview transcript with commentary, reading response, final project and presentation
Prerequisites: some musical training/experience necessary, see instructor for more information
Enrollment Preferences: Seniors, music and anthropology/sociology majors
Unit Notes: MUS World Music/Ethnomusicology
Distributions: Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Attributes: EXPE Experiential Education Courses

Class Grid

Updated 10:12 am

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