This course provides continued study of diatonic theory, including seventh chords in all inversions and an introduction to chromatic theory. Includes part writing, analysis, ear training, and keyboard harmony.

This course is a survey of selected musical traditions from different parts of the world, including Africa, Indonesia, Indian, the Caribbean, and the United States. The course adopts an ethnomusicological approach that explains music as a cultural phenomenon, and explores the social and aesthetic significance of musical traditions within their respective historical and cultural contexts. It examines how musical traditions change over time, and how such changes reflect and relate to social and political changes within a given society.

This course is for all who stay to the end of the credits, purchase soundtracks, and argue over who should have won the Oscar for Best Score, along with anyone else interested in the undervalued importance of music to the general effect of a motion picture. We will explore and discuss the myriad ways in which these two media interact. The course will focus on classic scores by Herrmann, Morricone, and Williams, as well as the uses of pre-existing music in films of Kubrick and Tarantino.

With varied repertoire, an intermediate-level women's choir providing excellent vocal training, occasional solo opportunities, and a structured sight-singing curriculum. Performs on and off campus, sometimes with men's choruses and orchestra. Previous ensemble experience is helpful, though not a prerequisite.

Studies and presents a variety of orchestra repertoire on and off campus. Multiple opportunities to perform each semester.

This course will focus on learning by ear and playing the polyrhythmic traditional music of the peoples of southern Ghana, Togo and Benin, including sections of Adjogbo and Agbekor. All students will learn drum, rattle and bell parts, some songs and some dance steps as well. Non musicians are welcome, but practicing between classes is required. The group will perform in a workshop at the end of the semester.

Gentrification, unemployment, crime, failing schools, disinvestment, mass incarceration--what comes to mind when you think of the inner city? In response to a constrained fiscal environment, cities have increasingly adopted neoliberal policy approaches to address seemingly intractable urban problems. The seminar will study current research to assess the political and economic impact of this neoliberal policy regime on housing, education, and public safety. This is an inter-institutional class, linked with an advanced seminar on the same topic at Holyoke Community College.

This course examines the discursive relationship between race and law in contemporary U.S. society. Readings examine the ways in which racial bodies are constituted in the cultural and political economy of American society. The main objective is to explore the rules and social practices that govern the relationship of race to gender, nationality, sexuality, and class in U.S. courts and other cultural institutions. Thinkers covered include W.E.B. DuBois, Kimberle Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, and Richard Delgado, among others.

The Vocal Jazz Ensemble is a select group of singers which performs classic and contemporary jazz vocal music. The group performs in concert twice a semester and occasionally off campus as well. Solo opportunities also exist with the Big Band and Chamber Jazz Ensembles for students enrolled in Vocal Jazz.

The Big Band is a mixed instrumental group open to beginning, intermediate, and advanced musicians. Students learn a variety of classic and contemporary swing, Latin, jazz, and pop standards. The group performs in concert twice a semester and occasionally off campus as well.