Lecture (LEC)

• TOPIC: Ecomusicology and Environmental Justice
• Above class meets with CULS-C 701

Topic: Ecomusicology & enviro justice

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 led 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.

Lecture (LEC)

• TOPIC: Ethnography of Subcultures

Topic: Ethnography of subcultures

Taking the growing crises of the present day as its starting point, this seminar investigates the role of subculture (broadly conceived) in a time of increasing political disillusion and democratic erosion. In what ways do subcultures articulate commentaries and critiques of contemporary society as well as providing material alternatives to the competing hegemonies of public life? Why do music and performance often play prominent roles in articulations of the subcultural? Beginning with case studies from the Birmimgham School of Cultural Studies leading up to contemporary ethnographic inquiries in the fields of ethnomusicology and cultural anthropology, the goals of this seminar are twofold. Firstly, we will explore the specific utility of ethnographic methods in understanding groups often deemed taboo or undesirable by normative standards, diving into the ethics of participant observation amongst research subjects that may or may not straddle lines of moral ambiguity. Secondly, this seminar aims to take seriously the societal critiques that subcultures pose through an investigation of various case studies in music and sound studies. What can ethnomusicology learn from counterpublics who have chosen to live differently¿outside normative concepts of success, social mobility, and neoliberal productivity¿and how have ethnographers flipped these investigations into a critique of modernity at large?