MUS 251 - Music, Sound, and Climate Change

Can music be a tool for socioenvironmental justice? What listening sensibilities do we need to nurture in a world of environmental catastrophe and predatory violence? How have environments been changing sonically and how have people been musicalizing their loss and resistance? This course addresses climate crisis through a focus on the acoustic while analyzing contrasting notions of nature, preservation, life, and sound that emerge as people struggle to live, ritualize life in relation to land, and craft joy in the struggle. Class relies on interdisciplinary multimedia material focusing on different parts of the world, with emphasis on decolonial, feminist, Black, and Indigenous perspectives.

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).