Music and Violence

4 credits · Graduate

Music can be a form of weapon or torture; a mediating force in conflict resolution; a force complicit with violence; storehouse of memory or process of healing for survivors of violence; a mode of resistance against a violent regime; and a creative process of alliance-building, among others. This seminar explores the various intersections of music and violence, and the emerging body of scholarship within ethnomusicology over the last decade dedicated to the subject. We will investigate the role of expressive culture in generating, mediating, contesting, or sustaining political and other social violence, and ask how music enables us to think creatively through the relationship between critical attention, compassion, and commitment.