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Contents CourseMusic 665: Issues in Ethnomusicology Official course outline. InstructorProfessor Michael Frishkopf Ethnomusicology is "the meaningful sonic-social practice of studying music as a meaningful sonic-social practice" (). Ethnomusicology constitutes the broadest possible approach to studying music as a broadly constituted humanistic-scientific phenomenon (encompassing sound, meaning and emotion, discourse, and practice), the study of "humanly organized sound" (John Blacking) in its physical, psychological, social, cultural, and historical contexts, fusing "ethno-musicology" with "ethnomusic-ology", and expanding music studies in at least three dimensions: (1) the notion of "music" itself: from ethnocentric western concepts (Merriam-Webster: "vocal or instrumental sounds combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion") to geocentric, maybe eventually interplanetary or cosmically, concepts of sound; (2) contextually: from music in itself as sound, to larger frames of musical meaning, discourse, and practice, (3) from musicology traditionally conceived as music history to a wide spectrum of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives (including fine arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as science, technology, health sciences, law, education...the gamut). Ethnomusicology is "ethno-musicology" (an emic or local perspective on the study of music as culturally construed), as well as "ethnomusic-ology" (an etic perspective on all music, defined locally). This course aims to catalyze your critical understanding of the field of ethnomusicology, considered as a practice, a discourse, a literature, an intellectual history, and a shifting social network, as well as launch your own ethnomusicological thinking and research, by cultivating familiarity with issues, sources, theories, methods, and seminal figures, and its self-positioning in relation to other scholarly domains. Together we’ll explore the ways in which ethnomusicology has formulated and reformulated itself over time, by drawing upon related fields of the human sciences, such as anthropology, folklore, linguistics, dance ethnology, psychology, sociology, media studies, economics, history, political science, and literary studies, applying a variety of theoretical models to ethnomusicological data. The course also aims to introduce you to ethnomusicology's principal scholars and scholarly sources, rapidly traversing a wide array of ethnomusicological literature, while pausing to consider landmark works in greater depth. We will introduce key issues and schools of thought (or paradigms), for thinking about music writ large, along with associated methodologies for studying it. Finally, this course encourages you to develop your own research directions in ethnomusicology, encouraging a deeper understanding of the research process through preparation of an original research proposal, which may perhaps evolve to become your graduate research project or thesis. Assignments, including reading, listening, viewing, and writing, are all designed to achieve the above goals. Requirements and mechanicsThis is a seminar course, structured to facilitate critically engaged discussions. Each week we’ll meet for approximately three hours to present and discuss ideas about music. It is imperative that you have completed the week’s readings (or, sometimes, viewings and listenings) before coming to class. Sometimes readings will be assigned to particular individuals; everyone can expect to receive at least one assignment of this type. When you are assigned a reading, come to class ready to present and critique that reading, and to kindle and facilitate its discussion among your peers. A few important points about reading: Read for gist. Don't worry if you don't understand everything, but try to grasp the essentials. Summarize key points in notes. Read non-linearly. Reading something doesn't mean "start at the beginning and read to the end"; most readings are not narratives, much less novels. Jump around, as if the document were hypertext, especially for online documents, following keywords, according to your interests. Interrogate. Read critically. Question everything. Your key points can be questions as well as assertions. Do the same for audio-visual content.
Note that while you are free to use AI tools to develop ideas or assemble bibliographies, any AI-generated text must be enclosed in quotation marks and referenced as machine-generated. Submission of AI-generated text without such quotation and reference is deemed to constitute plagiarism and will not be tolerated. ResourcesSociety for Ethnomusicology website (more useful if you become a member). ScheduleNote: In weeks when class is cancelled due to holidays there are still assignments due, so please read the schedule details carefully! Schedule details and assignments Evaluation and gradingGeneral participation and class presentations: 25% All weekly assignments are to be uploaded via the assignment page before class (10 am) on the due date. (This is very important so you'll be prepared for class.) Thereafter, an eighth point will be deducted, and an additional eighth point for each subsequent day of lateness (e.g. 8 days' lateness lowers an A to a B). The final research proposal must be submitted by the end of the day on its due date; thereafter, an eighth point will be deducted for each day of lateness. Evaluations of each assignment are on a scale from 0 - 100, reflecting the letter grades below. These scores are combined according to the percentages indicated in order to produce a final numeric grade. This grade is rounded to the nearest numeric value in the table below, in order to determine the final letter grade. A+: 4.3 (98) A: 4.0 (95) A-: 3.7 (92) B+: 3.3 (88) B: 3.0 (85) B-: 2.7 (82) |