PV Soundscapes

(Offered as MUSI 238 and FAMS 312.)  This course is about exploring, participating in, and documenting the musical communities and acoustic terrain of the Pioneer Valley. The first part of the course will focus on local histories and music scenes, ethnographic methods and technologies, and different techniques of representation. The second part of the course will involve intensive, sustained engagement with musicians and sounds in the Pioneer Valley.

Jazz History to 1945

(Offered as MUSI 226 and BLST 234 [US].)  One of two courses that trace the development of jazz from its emergence in early 20th-century New Orleans to its profound impact on American culture. Jazz History to 1945 examines its early roots in late 19th-century American popular culture and its role as American popular music in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s.

Music & Culture I

(Offered as MUSI 221 and EUST 221.) One of three courses in which music is studied in relation to issues of history, theory, culture, and performance, with the focus of the course changing from year to year. In 2016-17, this course is an introduction to European music in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. We will begin by singing Gregorian chant and will go on to cover such topics as the music of the Troubadours, the polyphonic style associated with Notre Dame, the development of musical notation, Renaissance sacred polyphony, madrigals, court dances, and the birth of opera.

Writing Through Music

This course will introduce students to important concepts in effective academic writing by thinking about and thinking through popular music. Our complex relationships to popular music confront us with a host of challenging social, cultural, political, and ethical issues. How do we use music to construct, maintain, or challenge private and public identities? How are race, gender, class, sexuality, and the nation constructed through popular music? What is the role of music in our everyday lives?

Topology

An introduction to general topology; the topology of Euclidean, metric and abstract spaces, with emphasis on such notions as continuous mappings, compactness, connectedness, completeness, separable spaces, separation axioms, and metrizable spaces. Additional topics may be selected to illustrate applications of topology in analysis or to introduce the student briefly to algebraic topology. Four class hours per week. Offered in alternate years.


Requisite: MATH 355. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Zhang.

Theoretical Statistics

(Offered as STAT 370 and MATH 370.) This course examines the theory underlying common statistical procedures including visualization, exploratory analysis, estimation, hypothesis testing, modeling, and Bayesian inference.  Topics include maximum likelihood estimators, sufficient statistics, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and test selection, non-parametric procedures, and linear models. Four class hours per week.


Requisite: STAT 111 or STAT 135 and STAT 360, or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students.  Spring semester. Professor Horton.

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