Music and Attention

3.0 credits · Graduate

The experience of complete absorption is becoming increasingly rare today, due to countless demands on our attention in the form of omnipresent technological blandishments. As a result, attention is being theorized, and arguably fetishized, as perhaps never before. This seminar will explore various concepts of auditory attention, taking historical, cross-cultural, and cognitive approach to the topic. It will survey recent work from music studies, but also the history of science, literary studies, and anthropology, that explores question of attention and its perceived opposite, distraction.