Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology

As the urgency of climate change and ecological devastation around the world has become increasingly difficult to ignore, scholars in the humanities have rigorously turned toward articulating questions about the Anthropocene. Music scholars have equally become engaged with these questions both as scholarship and activism. Intertwined efforts in musicology and ethnomusicology and other adjacent disciplines over the past several decades have thus lead to the definition of the subdiscipline or subfield of ecomusicology. During this seminar, we will trace the historical trajectory leading to current work in ecomusicology and environment-related music research, while also taking time for broad interdisciplinary exploration of some of the most compelling work to emerge in environmental health and justice.