MUS 152 - Popular Music and Alternative Histories

What histories and stories do songs tell about gender, race, sexuality, and colonialism in the Americas? This class focuses on how some artists, performances and songs shape non-hegemonic connections between peoples and places in the Americas, while centering on the role of people often taken for granted in the formation of popular music genres. Topics include: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and rock and roll; Indigenous popular musics and decolonizing struggles; music performance and feminist protests; popular music and trans* and queer activism; Nina Simone and the civil rights movement; Black feminisms and hip hop; Afro-Latino American women spiritual leaders and popular music.

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).