Universität Wien

160058 UE Sounding Colonial/Decolonial: Gender, Music, Queerness (2024S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 16 - Musikwissenschaft und Sprachwissenschaft
Continuous assessment of course work
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 30 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

The course will commence on 11th April. Any sessions cancelled before the Easter holidays will be rescheduled in blocks.

  • Thursday 11.04. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 18.04. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 25.04. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 02.05. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 16.05. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 23.05. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Friday 31.05. 13:15 - 14:45 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 06.06. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 13.06. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Saturday 15.06. 13:15 - 16:30 Hörsaal 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3G-EG-09
  • Thursday 20.06. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31
  • Thursday 27.06. 16:45 - 18:15 Seminarraum 1 Musikwissenschaft UniCampus Hof 9, 3A-O1-31

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

In this course we will critically and theoretically explore the workings of discipline and compelled disciplinarity within the Western academy, highlighting the extent to which even those academic sites self-constructed as ostensibly “inclusive” are, rather, deeply implicated in the perpetuation of exclusionary (ideological/material) structures and structuring. We will, moreover, highlight the explicitly gendered nature of these epistemic structures, exploring their historical and continuing contemporary links to coloniality. Our specific foci will be the disciplinary sites of music studies (particularly ethnomusicology, and its relation to cultural anthropology) and queer studies, highlighting the extent to which both – individually and, more recently, in tandem – are significantly implicated in the perpetuation of a hegemonic, colonialist control of knowledge production and, concomitantly, the continuation of economic/academic disparities. We will ultimately foreground how attention to those areas arguably essential to both disciplinary sites, yet startlingly obliterated – respectively, sound/sonicity and embodied sexuality – may be embraced and enlisted in the creation of a decolonial, anti-disciplinary future marked not only by new modes of knowledge production, but also a proliferation of pluriversal, dialogic spaces.

The course will comprise a combination of lectures, open discussions, and student presentations. Active student engagement is expected. Note that, as an interdisciplinary course, the readings, presentations, and discussions will engage texts representing extremely diverse foci, disciplinary locations (including music, queer/feminist/decolonial/gender/sound studies) and methodological orientations.

Assessment and permitted materials

Students will be responsible for several short presentations and written assignments assigned regularly throughout the semester. The presentations will be assessed as pass/fail (and must receive the former assessment). The written assignments must receive a passing grade.

Students are allowed a maximum of 3 absences. Active participation in and preparation for all course meetings (reading assigned texts; taking part in discussions) is expected of all students.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Students are allowed a maximum of 3 absences. Active participation in and preparation for all course meetings (reading assigned texts; taking part in discussions) is expected of all students.

Examination topics

Students' presentations and written assignments must demonstrate that they are able to approach music/sound in a socioculturally contextualized, critical, and interdisciplinary manner.

Reading list

Students will have required readings (45-60pp) to be completed before each class meeting. A representative (but not complete) reading list includes:

Amico, Stephen. 2023. “Introduction: Silencing.” Ethnomusicology, Queerness, Masculinity: Silence=Death. London: Palgrave.
Barz, Gregory. 2020. “Queering the Field: An Introduction.” Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (ed. Gregory Barz and William Cheng). Oxford: Oxford U. Press. 7-30.
Biddle, Ian D. and Kristen Gibson. 2009. ‘Introduction’. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice (ed. Ian D. Biddle and Kristen Gibson). Farnham: Ashgate. 1-12.
Chuh, Kandice. 2019. The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities ‘After Man’. Durham: Duke U. Press.
Cooley, Timothy J. and Gregory Barz. 2008. “Casting Shadows: Fieldwork Is Dead! Long Live Fieldwork! Introduction.” Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. Oxford: Oxford U. Press. 3-24.
Ewell, Philip. 2020. ‘Music Theory and the White Racial Frame’. Music Theory Online 26(2).
Eng, David, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz. 2005. ‘Introduction: What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?’ Social Text 84(5): 1-17.
Ferguson, Roderick A. 2012. The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference. Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press.
Gregg, Melissa and Gregory J. Seigworth. 2010. ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke U. Press. 1-25.
Hope, Cat. 2022. “The Sensuality of Low Frequency Sound.” The Body in Sound, Music, and Performance: Studies in Audio and Sonic Arts (ed. Linda O’Keefe and Isabel Nogueira). London: Routledge.
Ings, Welby. 2020. ‘Undisciplined Thinking: Disobedience and the Nature of Design.’ Postdisciplinary Knowledge (ed. Tomas Pernecky). London: Routledge. 48-65.
Korsyn, Kevin. 2003. Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research. Oxford: Oxford U. Press.
Li, Xinling. 2019. “Black Masculinity, Homosexuality, and Hip-Hop Music.” Black Masculinity and Hip-Hop Music: Black Gay Men Who Rap. London: Palgrave. 17-44.
Lorde, Audre. [1978] 1984. ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.’ Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley: Crossing Press. 53-59.
Lugones, María. 2008. ‘The Coloniality of Gender’. Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise 2: 1-17.
Mbembe, Achille Joseph. 2016. ‘Decolonizing the University: New Directions’. Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 15(1): 29-45.
Lutz, Catherine. 1995. ‘The Gender of Theory’. Women Writing Culture (ed. Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon). Berkeley: U. California Press. 249-66.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2018b. ‘The Invention of the Human and the Three Pillars of the Colonial Matrix of Power: Racism, Sexism, and Nature’. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh). Durham: Duke U. Press. 153-176.
Moosavi, Leon. 2020. ‘The Decolonial Bandwagon and the Dangers of Intellectual Decolonisation’. International Review of Sociology 30(2): 332-354.Rao, Rahul. 2020. Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality. Oxford: Oxford U. Press.
Morrison, Matthew D. 2019. ‘Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 72(3): 781-823.
Sontag, Susan. 1970. ‘The Anthropologist as Hero’. Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero (ed. E. Nelson Hayes and Tanya Hayes). Cambridge: MIT Press. 184-96.
Sousa Santos, Bonaventura de. 2018. The End of Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke U. Press.
Tellis, Ashley. 2012. ‘Disrupting the Dinner Table: Re-Thinking the “Queer Movement” in Contemporary India’. Jindal Global Law Review 4(1): 142-156.
Wong, Deborah. 2015. ‘Ethnomusicology without Erotics’. Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 19: 178-185.
Wynter, Sylvia. 1992. ‘Rethinking ‘Aesthetics’: Notes Towards a Deciphering Practice’. Ex-Iles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema (ed. Mbye Cham). Trenton: Africa World Press. 237-279.

Association in the course directory

BA: ETH-V, INT, FRE
MA (2008): M02, M03, M04, M05, M08, M13, M16
MA (2022): E.ETH, E.INT, H.ETH, H.INT, S.ETH, S.INT

Last modified: We 01.05.2024 13:26