Syllabus

 Week 1: January 31 • Syllabus and Introduction • Queens

Week 2: February 7 • Fandom, Rock, and Punk • 🎨✨zine workshop✨🎨• Queens

Email me any materials you would like me to print for your zine by 8 am on Monday, February 5th. 

Read before class: Geffen, Sasha. “SCREAMING THE BEATLES: The First Boy Band Breaks the Gender Mold.” In Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, 13–26. University of Texas Press, 2020. 

  • Reading Reaction 1 due

Week 3: February 14 • Narrative Through Musical Theatre • Queens

  • Create 1: In-Class Zine Workshop! Make a zine in class. You keep it, but send a digital copy or just your favorite page to [email protected] by February 9.
  • Create 2: In-Class Jukebox Musical Activity! Bring headphones 🎧

Write an original plot synopsis (or make an adaptation) with accompanying (pre-existing) songs for your own jukebox musical, and submit an accompanying playlist of your own creation. See the Mamma Mia! Wikipedia page and other pages for musicals for examples of how to format the plot and musical numbers together. You may choose to finish this at home if you feel like the project needs more time (Due Feb 19). 

Week 4: February 21 • Ludomusicology: Video Game Music • Foley Art • Queens

Read before class: Natalie Farrell, “K. K. COVID-19: Temporality, Trauma, and the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Soundtrack,” Journal of Sound and Music in Games. 2022.

  • Create 3: In-Class Foley Art Activity! Bring headphones 🎧and a laptop 💻!

In groups of 2-4, where ideally at least one of you has a laptop, and one of you can record on a phone (headphones/earbuds will make this easier): You will select a video clip (a scene from a movie, a viral video, tiktok/vine/etc.) that has sound and recreate some of the sounds! Feel free to leave the classroom, explore the building, go outside, be creative, then meet back here in 1 hour and send some of your sounds and the original clips to [email protected] so we can listen!  

  • Reading Reaction 2 due

Week 5: February 28 • No music class Week 5, CUNY follows Monday schedule 

Week 6: March 6 • Labor/Union/Protest Music • Zoom (note, this class will be on Zoom!)

  • Listening Reaction 3 due

Listen to any oral history from one of these collections, and write a short reflection post sharing what you learned from it!

Week 7: March 13 • Harlem Renaissance and Chicago Black Renaissance • Queens 

Read before class: Samantha Ege, “Florence Price and the Politics of Her Existence,” Kapralova Society Journal. 16 (2018).  

  • Reading Reaction 4 due

Week 8: March 20 • Mid-semester check-ins • Zoom. 

Week 9: March 27 • (De)constructing Prodigy: the Mozarts & Teresa Carreño • Queens

Read before class: Anna E. Kijas, ‘Teresa Carreño: “Such gifts are of God, and ought not to be prostituted for mere gain,” in Gary E. McPherson (ed.), Musical Prodigies: Interpretations from Psychology, Education, Musicology, and Ethnomusicology (Oxford, 2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Jan. 2017). 

  • Reading Reaction 5 due

Week 10: April 3 • MuseScore and BandLab workshop/workspace • Zoom

 Week 11: April 10 • Early Modern Music • Hildegard & Madrigals • Queens

Week 12: April 17 • Digital Archives Workshop • Zoom 

  • Create 4: Composition Project as a MuseScore/BandLab/Recording project. This project is very open-ended! One option is to use MuseScore and a matrix calculator to write 12-tone/serial music. Another option is to experiment with BandLab or MuseScore to create something else musical. You may also create a simple audio recording with your voice and/or instruments. You can use your voice, instruments, sounds from the world around you, or digital instruments. You may work alone or in a group. (Due April 21)

Week 13: April 24  •  Spring Recess, No Class Week 13

Week 14: May 1 • End-of-semester check-ins • Zoom 

  • Create 5a: Exhibit Topic & References (Due before individual meeting on May 1)

Submit a 1-2 paragraph topic proposal for your exhibit project and a formatted list of citations as a preliminary bibliography/works cited (which should include 4-6 potential sources at this point). 

Week 15: May 8 • Student Presentations of Exhibits • Queens

  • Create 5b: Spend time with a digital or in-person archival collection. Imagine you are a curator at a museum, pick a few of these items and write descriptions for each item as well as additional text for the exhibit. You can pick any musically-relatable topic from any time that you can find items for in an archive, such as suffrage music, labor music, or a musical genre, a specific composer or performer, etc. (Present your exhibit on May 8th)

Week 16: May 15 • Final Class – [SPACE MUSIC OR Topics of Your Choice] • Zoom

  • Create 5c: Turn in Exhibit, incorporating instructor/classmate feedback.  (Due May 20)