Selected Topics Seminar (535-0-1)

Topic

Music Historiography

Instructors

Ryan Dohoney
ryan.dohoney@northwestern.edu
Office Hours: Email instructor to arrange a meeting.
Professor Dohoney teaches courses in ethnomusicology, experimental music, US and African popular music, music in Cold War culture, queer music studies, and sound studies. He is currently at work on two book projects: a historical ethnography of the premier of Morton Feldman's <i>Rothko Chapel</i> and a study of New York City's music scene in the 1970s and 1980s written through the musical networks of experimental composer-performer Julius Eastman. His work as a composer of collaborative experimental music theater works has been presented at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, Portland Center Stage, Performance Works Northwest, and Robert Wilson's Byrd-Hoffman Watermill Center.

Meeting Info

Kresge 5531 Comp Lit. Sem. Rm.: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Music historiography will introduce you to various ways of writing about music both in and as history. We will explore a range of approaches drawn from musicology and beyond including general historiography, performance studies, anthropology, the history of the senses, and microhistory among others.

Learning Objectives

Though limited in scope by constraints of time and instructor inclination, the course will prepare you to think critically about your own historiographical practice as you gather archival and ethnographic sources and interpret evidence in your own work. Our studies will be put to practical use as you engage on a quarter-long archival research project.

Teaching Method

Seminar

Evaluation Method

Participation, Seminar leadership, research project

Class Materials (Required)

None

Class Notes

Co-listed as COMP_LIT 487