(Offered as MUSI 128 and BLST 344). This course examines the relationship between blues music and American culture. Using Amiri Baraka's influential 1963 book of music criticism, Blues People, as a central text, we will explore ways in which the "blues impulse" has been fundamental to conceptions of African-American identity. At the same time, we will trace the development of African-American music through its connection to West African musical traditions and through its emergence during slavery and the Jim Crow South.

Most of us listen to music by putting on our headphones and connecting to the internet, but not that long ago, such a feat was physically and technologically impossible. In the space of little more than a generation, there has been a sea change in how we listen to music. What are some of the implications of this transformation? If we are usually alone when we’re doing it, can listening to music still be considered a communal activity? Have we privatized the musical space? Have we democratized it? Has live music become a quaint vestige of the past?

A course designed to explore jazz harmonic and improvisational practice from both the theoretical and applied standpoint. Students will study common harmonic practices of the jazz idiom, modes and scales, rhythmic practices, the blues, and understand the styles of jazz in relation to the history of the music. An end-of-semester performance of material(s) studied during the semester will be required of the class. A jazz-based ear-training section will be scheduled outside of the regular class times. Two class meetings per week. This course is considered a point of entry to MUSI 241.

Fall semester: Through composition, analysis, and performance, we will build a solid working understanding of basic principles of melody and harmony common in Western musical traditions. Assignments include harmonizing melodies, writing short melodies and accompaniments, and composing in several forms such as 12-bar blues, classical minuets, and "Broadway"-style 32-bar AABA form. On several occasions we will use our instruments and voices to bring musical examples to life in the classroom. Two class meetings and one lab session per week.

This course is intended for students with little or no background in music who would like to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of how music works. Students will be introduced into the technical details of music such as musical notation, intervals, basic harmony, meter and rhythm. Familiarity with basic music theory will enable students to read and perform at sight as well as provide an introduction to the composition of melodies with chordal accompaniment.

In 1936 the official Soviet newspaper Pravda denounced Dmitri Shostakovich’s latest opera as “muddle instead of music.” In 1942 the Party used his “Leningrad” Symphony as propaganda in the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany. Shostakovich’s career demonstrates both the unlimited government support and the unlimited control totalitarian states exercise over their artists.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

The quadratic formula shows us that the roots of a quadratic polynomial possess a certain symmetry. Galois Theory is the study of the corresponding symmetry for higher degree polynomials. We will develop this theory starting from a basic knowledge of groups, rings, and fields. One of our main goals will be to prove that there is no general version of the quadratic formula for a polynomial of degree five or more. Along the way, we will also show that a circular cake can be divided into 17 (but not 7) equal slices using only a straight-edged knife.

Independent reading course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

Mathematicians confirm their answers to mathematical questions by writing proofs. But what, exactly, is a proof? This course begins with a precise definition specifying what counts as a mathematical proof. This definition makes it possible to carry out a mathematical study of what can be accomplished by means of deductive reasoning and, perhaps more interestingly, what cannot be accomplished. Topics will include the propositional and predicate calculi, completeness, compactness, and decidability.