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Fall 2013 Courses: MUSC 499 – The Music Video and MUSC 499 – Electronic Dance Music

The Thornton School of Music is pleased to offer two new courses for Fall 2013 that are open to all students at the University. Please see attached flyer.

No prior music experience or knowledge required.

MUSC 499: Special Topics – The Music Video (47254)

T/Th 2-3:50pm in UUC B2

v This is a 4-unit course

v This course will introduce students to the Music Video genre and how it has evolved since its emergence in the late 1970s.

v We will challenge participants to read music videos as texts by engaging with their visual and auditory materials.

v We will explore how the gender, race, and class of video participants shapes meaning, as well as how pacing and editing contribute to (or detract from) a narrative flow.

v Special topics include precursors of the music video in concert films and film musicals, Christian music video, fan-produced anime music videos, and video games.

v We will also consider the music video in relation to notions of stardom and celebrity, and will speculate on the future of the music video amid drastic changes in the production and marketing of media.

MUSC 499: Special Topics – Electronic Dance Music (47255)

Wednesdays 6-8:50pm in THH 202

v This is a 4-unit course

v This course will be considering two questions, one ontological, the other ethical:

1) What is EDM? 2) And what should EDM be?

v We will enlist history and musicology to describe EDM’s origins, development, and current incarnations. We will pay particular attention to how musical processes like DJing, scratching, synthesis and sequencing, and sampling have evolved since the mid-1970s.

v We will draw from cultural criticism to study social, political, and cultural phenomena such as constructions of race, neighborhood, and masculinity, misogyny and homophobia, intellectual property, and political activism.