Critical Social Inquiry 0199 - Sonic Politics: Culture, Power, and Popular Music

Is music raced? Is it sexed? How do musical sounds and performances become racialized and sexualized? How does music reflect, reproduce, and/or contest gender and racial boundaries? How do individuals use music to express their cultural identity? Such questions hint at the undeniable yet ineffable influence of race and sex on the US musical imagination. This seminar will consider the fraught intersection of race, power, and desire in contemporary popular music (hip hop, electronic dance music, rock, pop, punk, R&B/soul, world music, etc.). Utilizing an interdisciplinary amalgam of Popular Music Studies, Post-Colonial Theory, Critical Race Studies, Ethnic Studies, Literary Criticism, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and (Ethno)Musicology, we will investigate the local creation and global circulation of racially-coded and sexually-loaded sonic signifiers; questions of authenticity and appropriation; music as a form of cultural resistance and colonial domination; and music as a key component in identity formation. This course is reading-, writing-, and theory-intensive Keywords:Popular Music, Ethnic Studies, Queer Studies, Performance Studies, Black Studies

In/Justice The content of this course deals with issues of race and power Students should expect to spend 8-10 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time