T560 Spring 1997

Women, Music, and Gender (3 cr.)

Prof. Marianne Kielian-Gilbert

1:00-2:15 PM TR Room M267 (Simon Music Library)

Course description

This special topics course brings together work on women's studies and music analysis and interpretation (semiotics, critical theory) in order to explore connections between women, music, and gender. The course will be organized around particular topics (rather than by chronology) and in relation to specific musical works and analyses. We will consider different types of music from classical to popular and the ways in which gender is implicated in various musical practices or in the analyses which seek to characterize those practices.

Possible topics

• framing feminism: musicology and music theory
• theorizing difference--race, class, nationality, sexuality, gender (and representations of women)
• musical discourse, metaphor and narrative
• music and the body; performance and the role of the listener
• multiple positions and revisionist strategies; alternative genres
• personal voice, identity: the woman composer

Readings

Selections will also be geared to the interests of those participating and may include texts by authors such as: Abbate, Adorno, Atalli, Barkin, Boretz, Citron, Cook, Cox, Cusick, Dahlhaus, Drinker, Frith, Guck, Hisama, Kielian-Gilbert, Killam, Koskoff, Kramer, Maus, McClary, Nattiez, Rahn, Reich, Seeger, Shephard, Sloboda, Solie, Subotnik, Straus, Tick, Treitler, van den Toorn, Wood. [The instructor has particular interests in the music of 19th- and 20-century composers.]

Course Requirements

Readings, class discussion, short reaction papers or reports on issues arising in the readings, one major paper and class presentation.

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