2024-2025

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This one-quarter course is designed to enrich the listening experience of students, particularly with respect to the art music of the Western European and American concert tradition. Students are introduced to the basic elements of music and the ways that they are integrated to create works in various styles. Particular emphasis is placed on musical form and on the potential for music to refer to and interact with aspects of the world outside.

This one-quarter course is designed to enrich the listening experience of students, particularly with respect to the art music of the Western European and American concert tradition. Students are introduced to the basic elements of music and the ways that they are integrated to create works in various styles. Particular emphasis is placed on musical form and on the potential for music to refer to and interact with aspects of the world outside.

Our journey will involve engaging with a rich array of materials—books, articles, poetry, films, essays, and musical recordings—from prominent scholars and artists such as Hilary Beckles, Yarimar Bonilla, Aimé Césaire, Aisha Khan, Frantz Fanon, Shalini Puri, Édouard Glissant, Raquel Rivera, C.L.R. James, Sonjah Stanley Niaah, Aaron Kamugisha, Sylvia Wynter, Walter Mignolo, Carolyn Cooper, Fernando Ortiz, Michel Rolph Trouillot, Michaeline Crichlow, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Derek Walcott, and Nadia Ellis. 
 
This course is designed for anyone interested in theory that confronts the urgent challenges of our time. It also offers a model for how regional thought, deeply rooted in specific contexts, can expand to inform and transform global concepts. Throughout the course, we will uncover how Caribbean intellectual traditions continue to shape and influence contemporary theoretical debates, providing fresh perspectives on the world we live in.

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. The DCS provides students an opportunity for a sustained and supportive dissertation-writing workshop for Ph.D. students in Music.

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.