Communication 494MI - Music, Culture and Communicati

This course takes the view that our experience of music is mediated by the physical world, the mind, society and culture. Musical experience tells us a lot about who we are in relation to our cultural and physical environment. Thus the course allows the student to review the relevant Communication literature and integrate knowledge drawn from the physical sciences, social sciences and the humanities. Like other forms of communication, music can be studied in terms of its texts, institutions, and audiences. Unlike other forms of communication, music is best understood from an interdisciplinary perspective that deals with the physics of sound, neuropsychology, human biology, anthropology, and musicology. I urge students to ask: What is the biological, physical, social, and cultural context that renders music meaningful and popular? How can music be both socially and biologically constructed? What are the epistemological implications of this parallelism our understanding of communication, for the compartmentalization of knowledge, for the way we make sense of the world? Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Comm majors.

Open to Senior and Junior Communication majors only. Students who have previously taken COMM 497O should not enroll in this course. This course serves as an Integrative Experience (IE) requirement for BA-COMM majors.