MUS 222 - Varying topics in music history

Fall 2026

Instructor:
Meadows

Course description: Sounding, Listening, Knowing: From cell phone haptics to airport PA systems, much of routine life is marked by audible sound technologies. In both public and private spaces, listening and hearing have become fluid acts, with people “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out” in search of their own optimal sound worlds. But what happens when we resist disconnection? What can active, environmental listening teach us about auditory technologies and our relation to the world around us? This class explores the myriad and highly mediated ways that people create meaning from their environments. Drawing from such fields as Music Studies, English and Comparative Literature, Black Studies, and Communication Studies, this class will facilitate experiential learning for students by exploring the myriad and highly mediated ways that people create meaning from their environments. Throughout the semester, students will become familiar with and use mobile decibel readers, sound recorders, and media players as they traverse their larger community, keeping an ear to the ways that sound technologies emphasize subjectivities.

Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. 

Additional topics previously offered:

Title:Studies of Composers and Styles:Women in Music

Instructor
Keith

A study of music composed, performed, conducted, managed, and inspired by women. Through extensive listening, video screenings, readings, and discussion, this course will examine multiple case studies of women who have contributed to the development of music since the Middle Ages. Basic music concepts and history will be introduced in conjunction with each of the case studies. No previous background in music is required.

Instructor
VanderBeek

Studies of Composers & Styles course on Bollywood

On a grassy hilltop, a man and woman meet. The man’s arms are outstretched, and the woman’s hair and sari are billowing in the wind. The two sing their innermost desires to each other. And then the song stops, and reality kicks back in. This is the narrative world of Bollywood music, or the Hindi film industry that represents one of India’s most important cultural exports. Music in Hindi cinema offers a critical lens into Indian storytelling and aesthetics, popular trends in Indian fashion and sound, conceptions of the Indian state, and perceptions of the Western world. In this class, we study the history of music in Bollywood cinema from the 1940s until the present day. We examine how music is intertwined with the composition, production, marketing, distribution, and sale of films, and how film music is integral to everyday Indian conceptions of cultural identity.

Satisfies South Asian Studies minor requirement.
Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. 
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement.

Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement. 
 

Prerequisites & Notes
Repeatable for credit.