During the five three-hour sessions of the Dissertation Chapter Seminar each quarter, Ph.D. students in their fourth and fifth years will have the opportunity to share strategies for writing up their dissertations during the years of most intensive research. We shall work collectively to develop these strategies, investigating the on-the-ground research work that students bring to the DCS from the early stages of research to the completion of chapters in preparation for the dissertation-completion year. Each session will begin with a discussion of research-to-writing strategies, and it will conclude with discussion in the seminar of one or two pre-circulated chapters by students in the DCS. Ph.D. students who are not in residence during their fourth and fifth years, because they are conducting research or no longer in residence in Chicago, will participate remotely. During the Autumn Quarter of 2020/2021, the DCS will be entirely remote. The DCS provides students an opportunity for a sustained and supportive dissertation-writing workshop for Ph.D. students in Music.
The purpose of this seminar is to assist students (typically in their third year) in crafting a dissertation proposal, gaining critical feedback from their peers, and honing compelling research projects. The meeting schedule of the seminar will be flexible: beginning in the fourth week of Autumn term, we will meet about once every two weeks; it may be, however, that we pick up the tempo a bit during Winter term, such that during Spring term we can slow it down a bit to allow students more time to work with their advisors on the formulation of their research projects. Once I know the schedule of the Department workshops I will schedule the meetings of the DPS to avoid conflicts with classes, workshops and other events, and distribute an initial assignment for reading and discussion.
The Colloquium is a series of lectures followed by discussion and normally given by speakers from other institutions who are specially invited by the Music Department to share their recent research or compositions with students and faculty. All lectures take place on Friday afternoons.
This course is intended for students who wish to pursue specialized readings in music or to do advanced work in composition.
This course explores how geography shapes culture and how culture shapes geography within the context of traditional and popular musical practices from around the world. Starting from the premise that social processes, cultural practices, and different scales of geographic space are mutually interdependent, two foundational questions arise. First, how do diverse geographical knowledges mediate the interpretation and practice of different musical genres? Second, how does musical performance in the context of the political economy of music and musicians’ artistic agendas promote particular and competing spatial imaginaries? Students will interrogate terms from human geography such as space, place, local, global, and scale; assess debates surrounding these terms; and critically evaluate the power of maps to shape geographic knowledge. Through assembling this critical geographic lens, students will analyze the ways in which musical practices across different cultures converge with social processes and discourses including race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, diasporas, and technology and how a spatial imagination shapes this nexus.
