Music History and Culture Minor

The Music History and Culture Minor focuses on the study of music as part of the human experience, examining musical cultures across time and within different social and political contexts. Subjects range from broad overviews of classical, jazz, and world music to more focused studies of film, theatre, electronic, and popular music.

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand music within the context of its own culture and in the larger story of world music.
2. Understand the meaning of culture, relationships between music and culture, and various processes of cultural change, including problems arising from ethnocentrism, sexism, and racism as they affect the development of music.
3. Distinguish between and among various musical genres, forms, and styles.
4. Critically assess the ideas, forces, and values that provide the context for the music of a particular place and time.
5. Analyze significant primary music texts and works of art, ancient, pre-modern, and modern, as forms of cultural and creative expression.
6. Identify and understand through listening, writing and discussion, features of music from cultures other than their own, including consideration of religious, social, political, literary, and economic traditions.
7. Explore global/cultural diversity through the study of music.