MUS 154 - Popular Music in Portland and The Pacific Northwest

This course will take a place-based approach to the culture, politics, and history of popular music in the city of Portland and larger Pacific Northwest. What can the work of popular musicians both past and present tell us about the place we live in today? How have the complex workings of the city and the region shaped the culture of music here? Drawing upon a wide variety of listening and reading examples and foregrounding the sound and voices of Portland’s diverse group of popular artists, this course will provide a critical entry point for understanding Portland’s historically significant musical communities and introduce broader questions regarding the situated politics of popular music.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Lecture-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 non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts).