Students regularly submit essays of historical analysis, and engage in rewriting and peer review. Class requirements also include a final research paper and several oral presentations. The course examines the challenges of talking about and evaluating music. The question of what makes a music review authoritative is posed by investigating how institutions, such as large-circulation newspapers and prestigious journals, lend weight to an individual critic's aesthetic evaluation. Historically exemplary music criticism is analyzed along with reviews appearing in The New York Times and other prominent journals.
Students write reviews of both recordings and live performances.
Cultures of Poetic Suicide. French Popular Culture. This course presents an opportunity to explore diverse elements of French popular culture and to consider how specific aspects of French identity are constructed by certain artistic mediums. Selected works may include the farces of Feydeau and Courteline, the novels and films of Pagnol, the detective novels of Simenon, the comic films of Jacques Tati, the comic strip series of Tintin as well as Asterix and Ob lix, the Chanson Fran aise, and theaterical works by Ariane Mouchkine. Conducted in English.