Sacred Sounds: Music in Religious Context
MUSC 124
Fall 2015
| Section:
01
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Music forms an essential component of many religious practices throughout the world. From a tool for social solidarity to a trigger for intensely personal expression and even violence, the ability of music to shape religious life is tangible and often profound. This course employs the literature of ethnomusicology as a starting point for understanding the role of music in contemporary religious life and how associated artistic practices are implicated in dynamic processes of individual and social transformation. Music scholars employ a variety of interpretive lenses to articulate the meaning of such processes and a number of these will be central to our class discourse, including hybridity, transnationalism, gender, and identity formation. Students will critically assess these and other theoretical models through an exploration of largely ethnographic research dealing with a variety of broad religious categories: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, animist etc. Points of interreligious interaction will be of particular interest as a means to understand the central position music often plays in drawing groups with competing or conflicting socio-political views into sustained contact with one another. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA MUSC |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Credit/Unsatisfactory |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 | | Special Attributes: FYS |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Benjamin Brinner, PLAYING ACROSS A DIVIDE: ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN MUSICAL ENCOUNTERS
Graham Harvey and Karen Ralls-MacLeod, eds., INDIGENOUS RELIGIOUS MUSIC
Monique Ingalls et al, eds., CHRISTIAN CONGREGATIONAL MUSIC: PERFORMANCE, IDENTITY AND EXPERIENCE
Zoe Sherinian, TAMIL FOLK MUSIC AS DALIT LIBERATION THEOLOGY
Deborah Wong, SOUNDING THE CENTER: HISTORY AND AESTHETICS IN THAI BUDDHIST PERFORMANCE
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Examinations and Assignments:
Graded work will include a weekly listening report, mid-term paper, and a final paper. Class participation will count toward a portion of the student's grade. Class attendance is mandatory. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course is designed for prospective music majors and non-majors alike. A background in music is not required.
This class will be graded on a pass/no pass basis and students must achieve a minimum cumulative grade of C+ (78.5) in order to pass the course. Students will receive letter grades on all assignments and, while invited to office hours at any time, will also be required to meet with the instructor once around mid-term to discuss progress in the course. In lieu of a final grade, students will receive written comments available also to her/his advisor; the instructor hopes the comments will serve as the basis for a conversation about intellectual growth and curiosity, objectives, and skills and their assessment. |
| Instructor(s): Wiebe,Dustin Dennis Odell Times: ..T.R.. 10:30AM-11:50AM; Location: OLIN327B; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: X | JR major: X | | |
| Seats Available: 8 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: X | JR non-major: X | SO: X | FR: 15 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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