Topics in Music, Gender, and Sexuality

Graduate / Professional

This graduate seminar delves into foundational and recent scholarship on the relationships between music and constructions of gender and sexuality. It is not intended as an all-encompassing survey of this topic and its history, but rather as an introduction to some of the innumerable approaches and “objects” of study at the nexus of music, gender, and sexuality. Readings are drawn from work in historical musicology, popular music studies, ethnomusicology, music theory, performance studies, and beyond, and include (but are not limited to) work by such scholars as Suzanne Cusick, Will Cheng, Kara Keeling, Wayne Koestenbaum, Emily Wilbourne, Judy Tsou, Alisha Lola Jones, and Daphne Brooks. To encourage students to read beyond the syllabus, the later weeks of the semester are left open for students to curate their own selections of scholarship for the rest of the class to read together (please note that the scope of this curation will depend on the number of enrolled students). Undergraduates and students outside of the FAS/GSAS may enroll, but only with permission of the instructor. W 1:30pm-3:25pm