As the only department to combine the disciplines of folklore and ethnomusicology, we offer students an exceptional opportunity to master the study of expressive culture at home and abroad, among different populations, in the past and in the present.
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Our courses focus on a diverse range of theoretical, methodological, and topical approaches to document, analyze, and interpret cultural forms and practices across the world. Engaging in both fieldwork-based ethnographic and archival research, our students learn to employ theoretical, historical, and practical approaches in their study of music, visual art, material culture, verbal art, cultural performance, and cosmological and mythological systems.
This course investigates how transnational feminist, queer, and antiracist theoretical, activist, and creative work intersects with folklore and folklife, and will look at how vernacular expressive culture situates ways of being in the world that are foundational to social, cultural, and political change and sustenance.
What does it mean to be human? In this course, we will examine recent intellectual trends focused on decentering the human. Examining literature and audio examples from biomusicology, zoömusicology, ecomusicology, multispecies ethnography, and other emergent subfields, we will tackle questions pertaining to humans, relationships with non-humans, subjectivity and subalternity, and the place of humans in the Anthropocene.
The College of Arts