Global Perspectives on Music, Gender and Sexuality

This course offers an introduction to the topics of gender and sexuality within music studies. Since the late 1980s, ethnomusicologists, popular music scholars, historical musicologists and music analysts have drawn on gender and queer theory to reveal how gender and sexuality are embedded in music performance, composition and production. Scholars have critiqued the white male canon of Western art music and investigated gender power relations in musical cultures around the world; they have addressed the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect through musical performance with other social categories, such as ethnicity, age, race and ability as well as proposing alternative ways of conducting and writing music history, ethnography and analysis; and they have reflected upon their own ethical roles as scholars and the potentials of socially engaged scholarship. Charting many of these debates, this course will investigate numerous contemporary artists, music traditions and musical institutions that urge us to enquire more about the global politics of gender and sexuality. The focus of individual lectures and seminars include: Beyoncé and Black feminism; the gendered nature of European nation building; David Bowie and masculinities; postcolonial feminisms in Africa; Björk and technology; Sámi music and ecofeminism; Turkish music and queer citizenship: musical commemoration of the 2016 Orlando LGBT nightclub shootings; and kothi and hijra dancers in India. As the rights of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people top political agendas around the world, this course will highlight the importance of gender and queer approaches in contemporary music studies.

Knowledge:Students who complete this course will have:- gained knowledge on contemporary debates on gender and sexuality in music studies- deepened their understanding of wider interdisciplinary debates on gender and queer theory, particularly issues of intersectionality- learned about specific musical artists, traditions, performances and institutions which are embedded in issues of gender and sexualitySkills:Students who complete this course will have:- gained the ability to discuss musicological and wider gender and queer literature- developed their skills in assessing audio-visual material- deepened their expertise in presenting (both orally and in writing) original thoughts on current debates

This course will consist of lectures and seminars with obligatory attendance (minimum 80% participation). Each lecture will address particular case studies and a specific debate on gender and sexuality within music studies; each accompanying seminar will introduce a text from wider interdisciplinary gender and queer studies that further deepens discussion of the lecture topic. Within each lecture and seminar, discussion will focus around set texts and audio-visual material as well as various materials prepared by students. Whilst the main set literature will be by scholars from various sub-disciplines of music studies, there will be a greater emphasis on literature from popular music studies and ethnomusicology. It is expected that students will be prepared to discuss these texts and their views on them at each lecture/seminar. Students are also required to keep a journal/diary charting their learning after each class. One week before the submission of semester essays, students will be required to give and receive peer-feedback on assignments.