MUS 202-01 - Topics in American Music: Popular Music

4 credits (Fall)

This course examines the confluence of popular music, culture, and society in North America from 1890 to present. The class is primarily organized around genre - itself a key concept in popular music studies - moving from late 19th-Century minstrelsy through blues, country, rock and roll, punk, and contemporary hip hop. As we explore the musical development of each genre, we will use music as a means to begin to unravel the web of racialized, gendered, sexualized, and class-based relationships that have characterized North American culture through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Staff