Unit name | Music, Technology and Cultural Change, 1900 - present day |
---|---|
Unit code | MUSI20117 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Dr. Kate Guthrie |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of Music |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
How has technology affected the way we think about, create and consume musical culture? This unit explores this question by examining how sound reproduction technologies have impacted on musical culture from the early twentieth century to the present day. Focusing on Britain and the USA, it considers how technologies such as the gramophone, radio, Walkman, iPod and digital download have evolved within specific social, political and intellectual contexts. In addition, it uses sound reproduction technologies to introduce key cultural debates of the twentieth century, including the relationship between art and popular, and between music, democracy, and national identity.
Students will have the opportunity to:
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
1. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a diverse range of literary texts;
2. apply an understanding of critical and theoretical reading to specific issues articulated in the designated literary texts;
3. discriminate between different critical perspectives on the literature studied;
4. identify and present pertinent evidence to develop a cogent argument;
5. demonstrate skills in textual analysis, argumentation, and critical interpretation, using evidence from primary texts and secondary sources
The unit will be delivered through 11 2-hour seminars.
Students will be assessed through two summative assignments:
Adorno, Theodor. Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Boschi, Elena; Kassabian, Anahid, & Quinones, Marta Garcia. Ubiquitous Musics: The Everyday Sounds That We Don't Always Notice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Edgerton, David. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. London: Profile Books, 2006.
Goodman, David. Radio’s Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Gopinath, Sumanth and Stanyek, Jason. The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies: Volume 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Lacey, Kate. Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age. Cambridge, 2013.
LeMahieu, D.L. A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain Between the Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. London: Duke University Press, 2003.
Sterne, Jonathan ed., The Sound Studies Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.