HSA 10
This seminar course introduces students to inquiry, writing, and research in HSA, through focused exploration of a particular topic selected by the instructor in each section. To encourage reflection on the place of HSA within the Harvey Mudd curriculum, this course includes a brief unit on the history and aims of liberal arts education. Writing assignments include a substantial research paper on a topic of interest chosen by the student in consultation with their instructor. The course ends with student research presentations in each section, followed by a Presentations Days event featuring the best presentations from across all sections.
Audiotopia
In 2005, MacArthur-winning scholar and music critic Josh Kun theorized popular music as a utopian site “that actively refutes and re-orders oppressive hierarchies of power and control” (17). Kun argues that, through music, we can hear our way into new ways of being, not just as individuals, but as a nation. Kun theorizes that music opens paths to hear beyond society’s vested interests and dominant groups, allowing us to access counter-imaginaries of marginalized groups and individuals. Most importantly, audiotopias make space for the coexistence of multiple ways of imagining the nation.
Kun’s work not only draws attention to the many ways that music intersects with issues such as history, nation, race, and class. Rather, it underscores the varied means of knowledge production at the disposal of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. In Kun’s work, the material evidence of history—archival records, documentary footage, artefacts of the past—generates meaning. So too, however, do ephemeral moments of music-making, listening, and talking about music. In short, Kun’s work reminds us that the ways we perceive music and the things we say about music are just as important as “the music itself.”
In this course, we take Kun’s book, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (2005) as a keystone text to examine music’s utopian potentials, and the limits of music’s capacity to effect social change. We will use this text to guide thinking, writing, and presenting about the ways in which music shapes and is shaped by society. We will practice how to read texts that may cause uncertainty or confusion. And finally, we will place Kun’s work in the context of the American liberal arts tradition, examining the role that academic disciplines play in setting the terms for knowledge formation, and considering what this might imply about academic pursuits at a liberal arts STEM school.
Student Work
All students in this section of HSA 10 write a music review that is posted to our course blog. For previous examples of student writing, you can visit the Mudders on Music section of Ethnomusicology @ HMC.