Governing Culture: Music and the Arts in Political Life

The social function and governmental regulation of aesthetic life play a key role in the constitution of political regimes. This course examines debates on the arts as instruments of power, distinction, resistance, contestation, and revolution, from the early modern period to the present. The government of music, sound, noise, and silence will offer a point of comparison among absolutist monarchies, modern republics, totalitarian regimes, liberal democracies, and colonial empires. In addition to music, the course draws from political sources, theoretical works, literature, and the visual arts.