Sounds of America

Catalog description

This course explores the cultural, social, political, and economic implications of sound and music. The course applies deep listening and critical thinking techniques for students to interrogate how American societies engage with discourses around music production, circulation, and consumption. Studying sounds and music genres as texts, students analyze a plethora of topics, including but not limited to historical studies of jazz, cultural politics of country music, and contemporary iterations of rap music. Using hemispheric approaches, students also interrogate sounds and music genres of the Americas to grasp how sounds travel across borders.