MUSIC 3317

Music in the Making and Unmaking of Race

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2021-2022.

How do music, sound, and listening practices construct race? Conversely, how might we critically understand those moments when, in experiences of music, we feel race and other divisions temporarily melt away? What would it take to unmake race for real? Would we even want to? This course seeks answers in everyday experiences like urban noise and voice-overs that racialize nonhuman movie characters, and also in texts by scholars and radical decolonial and abolitionist activists. Our goals will be, first, to build critical awareness of race's own geographic and historical embeddedness, inner logics, and sonic manifestations; and second, to consider when, how, and why race might cease to be, and what the role of sound might be in its unmaking.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (CA-AS, ALC-AS)

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