American Music Concentration

The American Music concentration, open to all majors, brings together the most prominent strands of American music scholarship on campus and provides students with a framework for understanding the diverse musics and musical cultures of America.

Taking its inspiration from the multidisciplinary approaches characteristic of this emerging field, the concentration includes a gateway course surveying American musical history and genres; one course from a field or interdisciplinary area offering a critical perspective on American culture; three courses offering in-depth study of musical traditions essential to the American soundscape; one course in which detailed exploration of a single cultural site or perspective will deepen students' understanding of the importance of particular social institutions or circumstances shaping musical life; and a capstone research seminar in which students pursue individual projects. No previous musical experience is required of concentrators.

Requirements for the Concentration

Seven courses are required. In addition to the gateway and capstone courses, students must complete one course each from Groups I and III, and three courses from Group II.

Gateway Course:

Group I: Developing Critical Perspectives

  • AFAM 115 An Introduction to African American Culture, Practice, and Religion
  • AMST 115 Introduction to American Studies: Immigration and American Culture
  • AMST 115 Introduction to American Studies: Placing Identities
  • CAMS 110 Introduction to Cinema and Media Studies
  • HIST 120 Rethinking the American Experience: American History, 1607-1865
  • HIST 121 Rethinking the American Experience: American Social History, 1865-1945
  • HIST 122 U.S. Women's History to 1877 (not offered in 2016-17)
  • HIST 126 African American History II
  • RELG 140 Religion and American Culture
  • SOAN 110 Introduction to Anthropology
  • SOAN 111 Introduction to Sociology
  • WGST 110 Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

Group II: The Soundtracks of America (at least one course must be at the 200-level or above)

  • CAMS 242 Sound and Music in TV and New Media
  • MUSC 111 Western Art Music: The Last 1000 Years
  • MUSC 132 Golden Age of R and B
  • MUSC 136 History of Rock
  • MUSC 208 Computer Music and Sound
  • MUSC 215 Music Theater in America
  • MUSC 245 Music of Africa
  • MUSC 247 1950s/60s American Folk Music Revival
  • MUSC 305 Seminar in American Music
  • MUSC 306 Moldy Figs and the Birth of Jazz Criticism
  • RELG 244 Hip Hop, Reggae, and Religion: Music and the Religion-Political Imagination of the Black Atlantic

Group III: Sites of the American Soundtrack

  • AMST 225 Beauty and Race in America
  • AMST 247 We've Never Not Been Here: Indigenous Peoples and Places
  • AMST 261 Unwritten America
  • AMST 396 "Invisible Domain": Religion and American Studies
  • DANC 266 Reading The Dancing Body: Topics in Dance History
  • ENGL 223 American Transcendentalism
  • ENGL 235 Asian American Literature
  • ENGL 236 American Nature Writing
  • HIST 205 American Environmental History
  • HIST 226 U.S. Consumer Culture
  • HIST 229 Working with Gender in U.S. History
  • POSC 355 Identity, Culture and Rights*
  • RELG 244 Hip Hop, Reggae, and Religion: Music and the Religion-Political Imagination of the Black Atlantic
  • SOAN 272 Race and Ethnicity in the United States
  • WGST 265 Black Feminist Thought: The Everyday World

Capstone

  • MUSC 306 Moldy Figs and the Birth of Jazz Criticism