MUS 355 - Black Women’s Music as Intellectual History

Music created and performed by Black people of African descent is most often valued for the vitality of its cultural contributions to the United States and the world. This emphasis on Black music as representative of Black culture, however celebratory, tends to obscure the ways in which music has given aural expression to trajectories of Black thought and ideas- that is, the ways it has been nourished by and has constituted Black intellectual history. Focusing on music-making by Black women, this course will consider how musical sound and performance has joined Black thinkers in conversation about such topics as historiography, political theory, feminism, spirituality, truth, goodness, and beauty. Through study of a range of artists, genres, and musical examples, students will critically assess the call and response between Black women’s music and lineages of Black thought about fundamental humanistic questions: What is justice? What does it mean to be free? What does it mean to be human?

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).