COML 3315

Music and Money

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

From the 1720 South Sea Bubble to the 2008 global financial crisis, from Handel's operas to Spotify's algorithms, music has chronicled the booms and busts of markets. This course investigates how music and money are entwined in discourse and practice by tracing an origin story of capitalism that began in eighteenth-century Europe. We will ask how music has captured the spirit of capitalism since its inception, stoking its fantasies and attuning to its effects. In turn, we will contemplate how systems of economic thought reckon with shifting ways of creating and consuming music. In allowing music ranging from broadside ballads to commercial jingles to illuminate mutually the writings of such thinkers as Smith, Marx, Adorno, and Graeber, our discussions will unravel varied musical lives through themes including credit and debt, labor and property, media and interest, trade and slavery, nature and environment. 

When Offered Spring.

Breadth Requirement (HB)
Distribution Category (CA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

Comments No prior experience of studying music or economics is necessary.

View Enrollment Information