While music is commonly thought of as a human universal, questions concerning the universality of human rights and the relativity of cultural forms are becoming more urgent because of global interaction and conflict. Music gives voice to human dignity and makes claims about social justice. Music is a register of power and domination, as is its silencing. The specific cultural contexts that give music its meaning may not translate into global arenas, thus highlighting the dilemmas of universality.

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.

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 to different kinds of musical notation, melodic systems, harmonies, meters, and rhythmic techniques with the goal of attaining basic competence in the performance and creation of music. The music we analyze and perform will be drawn from the Western tonal tradition as well as a variety of other musical traditions.

(Offered as BLST 214 [A] and MUSI 106.) This course concentrates on the lives and music of selected West African musicians. Departing from ethnographic approaches that mask the identity of individual musicians and treat African societies as collectives, this course emphasizes the contributions of individual West African musicians whose stature as master musicians is undisputed within their respective communities. It examines the contributions of individual musicians to the ever continuous process of negotiating the boundaries of African musical practice.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

The topic will vary from year to year.  The topic for fall 2014 is computational algebraic geometry.

The study of geometric objects by means of their defining equations dates back to the introduction of coordinates by Descartes in 1637.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

(Offered as STAT 360 and MATH 360.)  This course explores the nature of probability and its use in modeling real world phenomena. The course begins with the development of an intuitive feel for probabilistic thinking, based on the simple yet subtle idea of counting. It then evolves toward the rigorous study of discrete and continuous probability spaces, independence, conditional probability, expectation, and variance. Distributions covered include the Bernoulli and Binomial, Hypergeometric, Poisson, Normal, Gamma, Beta, Multinomial, and bivariate Normal. Four class hours per week.

Completeness of the real numbers; topology of n-space including the Bolzano-Weierstrass and Heine-Borel theorems; sequences, properties of functions continuous on sets; infinite series, uniform convergence. The course may also study the Gamma function, Stirling’s formula, or Fourier series. Four class hours per week.

Requisite: MATH 211. Fall  semester. Professor Velleman.  Spring semester:  Professor Ching.

A brief consideration of properties of sets, mappings, and the system of integers, followed by an introduction to the theory of groups and rings including the principal theorems on homomorphisms and the related quotient structures; integral domains, fields, polynomial rings. Four class hours per week.

Requisite: MATH 271 or 272 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester.  Professor Daniels.  Spring semester. Professor Folsom.