Topic for Winter 2013: Music and Modernism
In this course we will explore the concept of modernism in musical thought, composition, and performance practice. We will begin by focusing on early twentieth-century modernist movements such as expressionism and neoclassicism. Throughout the course we will study major works of twentieth-century modernist music, including several interdisciplinary artistic collaborations, and read primary texts that reveal the self-fashioning of some of the most influential modernist composers, such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Babbitt, and Boulez. We will contemplate the lasting influence of modernist approaches to musical performance and scholarship.

Topic for Spring 2013: Music and Colonialism in the Age of Exploration
This course will explore the role of music in colonial encounters from the 15th through the 18th centuries and the complex musical exchanges between colonizers and the colonized in New Spain, North America, and the Far East.