Syllabus version 1 (Tue Jan 23, 2018 0 8:00 AM - Wed Jan 31, 2018 08:00 AM)
Core UA730 (8146)
EXPRESSIVE CULTURE: SOUNDS
New York University
Spring 2018
MoWe 11:0012:15 + recitation session
Silver 320
Professor: David Samuels ([email protected])
Office hours: Wednesday 24 or by appointment
Office: 24 Waverly Place, Room 268, Office 266L
Alexandra McIe ([email protected]);
Section 2, F 9:3010:45, Silver 218
Section 3, F 11:0012:15, Silver 218
Preceptors: Joseph Pfender ([email protected]);
Section 4, F 9:3010:45, Silver 220
Section 5, F 11:0012:15, Silver 220
Course Synopsis
This class explores the role of sound in the social, perceptual, and cultural dimensions of human life. Over the course of the twentieth century thoughts, opinions, and observations about music were strongly involved in forming the ethical discourse about what it meant to be human in the modern world. Put another way, people involved in ethical discourse about the “good” and the “human” often drew on thoughts about musical sounds and musical practices in order to scaffold their arguments. The goal of this course is to begin to understand how and why music played this role in the production and circulation of ideas about human life and values. The discussion will center on four interrelated topics: (1) Cities, (2) Commerce, (3) Technology, and (4) Sound. These rubrics are clumsy but general cover terms for a series of interrelated discussions during the twentieth century: about the human values gained and lost in the process of urbanization; about the relative value of sales and art; about the technological advances of high fidelity; about Dylan “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival; about the value of harpsichords vs. pianos in the performance of Baroque music; about the use of vibrato in singing classical music; about homage and appropriation.
Class Procedures
CLASS SESSIONS will be devoted to discussing issues raised in the readings and listening selections. Part of our task will be to dive into a number of interwoven debates about the social life of sound. You should feel free to bring in materials and examples that will enhance our discussions by illustrating a point that you might want to make.
READINGS are due on the day they are listed. It is very important that you complete reading assignments on time. This class cannot work unless everyone is coming to play.
THERE IS ONE BOOK for this class.
Jack Hamilton (2016) Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
It’s available to you in several ways. Of course, copies have been ordered for purchase at the NYU Book Store (726 Broadway). You can also accesss it as an Ebook through the Bobst Library website. And, of course, you can purchase it through any online resources you prefer.
ADDITIONAL REQUIRED READINGS, if they are not available electronically through Bobst, will be available as .pdf files through NYU Classes. For online resources we will provide links. We will provide clickable links, whenever possible, to the online version of the syllabus in NYU Classes.
Writing
There are five writing assignments during the semester. They all take the form of critical essays of moderate length.
a) Three critical essays of moderate (23 pgs.) length.
b) Writing assignment #3 takes the form of a takehome midterm. The questions to be answered for this assignment will be arrived at in consultation with the class.
c) The final writing assignment (#5) is a more substantial final project, meant to help you cap off the themes of the semester by finding a topic to explore that holds some personal interest for you. This final project can take a number of forms, but all must include a substantial and wellexecuted written component.
All written work must be wordprocessed, in 12pt. Times or comparable font, with 1inch margins all around. Your approach should display evidence of critical engagement with course readings, listening, and discussions. The essays will be beautifully written, innovative, focused, and free from grammatical and typographical errors. They will be turned in on time. (For all written projects, the preceptors and I will reduce the grade by onehalf letter if we receive it late on the due date, and a further halfletter for each subsequent day the paper is late.) We will give you detailed instructions for these assignments in advance of their due dates.
Approximately once a week, you can expect to spend a few minutes of class time in free writing exercises. Our intention with these is to assist you in smoothing the connections between your thoughts and your written expression, to allow you to explore some ideas in an openended, nonthreatening context, and to push yourselves in writing quickly and clearly. These will be passed in. They will count toward your grade. Responses will be graded on a simple √, √+, √ system.
Writing prompt #3 (“the midterm”) will offer a handful of questions arrived at in dialogue with the class.
Our goal with all the writing assignments is to help you hone your skills at saying what you want to say in the way you want to say it, so that uninitiated readers can follow your argument and be responsive to it. This is a skill that is portable and durable.
Grading distribution
Attendance and participation 20%
Freewriting exercises 10%
Short essays (writing prompts 1, 2, and 4) 25%
Midterm (writing prompt 3) 15%
Final project proposal 5%
Final project (writing prompt 5) 25%
DUE DATES FOR ASSIGNMENTS ARE NOT FLEXIBLE. In order for discussion to flow, it’s necessary for you to submit your work on time. We will allow for late submissions only under the most extreme circumstances. (Note: computer problems do not constitute extreme circumstances. Be sure to back up your work regularly so that you always have a copy in the event of a computer meltdown.) To request an extension for an assignment, a legitimate excuse must be submitted in writing no later than one class period before the assignment is due. To avoid problems, please plan ahead and begin working on the projects as early as you can.
Writing quality, including spelling, grammar, and punctuation, counts in all written assignments. This includes Blackboard contributions. All assignments must be typed. Assignments should be submitted in hard copy, with an additional copy submitted electronically. We will not accept handwritten assignments.
Class Policies
1) I encourage you to discuss your work and assignments with your classmates, but ultimately you need to develop your projects and solutions independently. The general principle is simple: all of the work you turn in must be your own. If you have questions about academic dishonesty, please consult the “Academic Integrity” section of the NYU website:
https://www.nyu.edu/about/policiesguidelinescompliance/policiesandguidelines/academicintegrityforstudentsat nyu.html
2) Attendance is important. I can’t stress this enough. First, you’re responsible for material presented in class but not found in reading assignments. Second, it is crucial for students to have time to discuss problems and question with each other. Absence hurts everyone’s success.
3) I encourage you to consult me during my office hours or email me if there is anything at all on your mind about the course, if there is anything you wish to discuss, or if there is something you need help with.
A Note About Your Preceptors
This class is lucky to have two outstanding and experienced graduate students as preceptors. Your preceptors will get to know you and your work very well, and their evaluations of your written work and classroom participation will constitute the bulk of your grade. More importantly, they are there to help you become more complete writers and critical thinkers, to help you sharpen your skills and help you productively respond to your questions about important issues. Recitation sessions are a central part of this course, a place where you can experiment with ideas, reduce your confusion, and share your experiences. I have complete trust in them, and I expect that you will work closely with them, learn from them, and treat them with respect.
A Note About The Syllabus
This syllabus is a working document and subject to change. As the semester progresses, we may decide to modify readings, assignments and due dates to reflect the needs and interests of the group, or to accommodate the schedules of potential guest lecturers. Updated versions of the syllabus will be posted on the NYU Classes site and mentioned in class.
COURSE SCHEDULE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS
WEEK 1—Introduction and outline of the course; groundwork
Mon 22 January
No reading
Wed 24 January
Baker Brownell (1950) The Community in Art. In The Human Community: Its Philosophy & Practice for a Time of Crisis. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, pp. 253282.
Norman Cousins (1945) “Modern Man is Obsolete.” Saturday Review of Literature, August 18, pp. 59.
Stuart Chase (1949) “On Being Culture Bound.” The Antioch Review 9(3):293306.
WEEK 2—Modernity & Community
Mon 29 January
Note: Writing assignment #1 handed out today, due in class next Monday, February 5
Anthony Giddens (1990) “Trust and Modernity.” In The Consequences of Modernity, pp. 79111. Stanford: Polity Press.
Henry George (2010) From Social Problems (1886). In The Community Land Trust Reader (ed. John Emmeus Davis), pp. 6675. Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Wed 31 January
George Gerbner (1960) “The Individual in a Mass Culture.” The Saturday Review, June 18, pgs. 1113, 3637.
David J. Gray (1964) “Individualism in an Organized America” Modern Age 8(3):260269.
Barbara Erenreich (2007) “Reclaiming What Makes Us Human.” In These Times, March, pp. 2833.
Edith Turner (2012) “Music and Sport: Being in the Zone.” In Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 4354.
WEEK 3—Cities
Mon 5 February
Steven Johnson (2006) “That is to say, Jo has not yet died,” in The Ghost Map pgs. 81109. [UPLOADED TO CLASSES]
Rebecca Solnit and Joshua JellyShapiro (2016) “Singing the City: The New York of Dreams.” In Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1621. [UPLOADED TO CLASSES]
Wed 7 February
Jean Gottmann (1957) “Megalopolis or the Urbanization of the Northeastern Seaboard.” Economic Geography 33(3):189 200. [AVAILABLE THROUGH BOBST WEBSITE EJOURNALS] Richard Longworth (2012) “Urban America: U.S. Cities in the Global Era.” Journal of International Affairs 65(2):97 110. [AVAILABLE THROUGH BOBST WEBSITE EJOURNALS]
Peter Moskowitz (2017) “An Elegy.” In How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood. New York: Nation Books. [UPLOADED TO CLASSES]
WEEK 4—The Esthetics of Cities
Mon 12 February
Daniel J. Walkowitz (2010) “The Second Folk Revival.” In City Folk: English Country Dance and the Politics of the Folk in Modern America. Oxford University Press. [AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK ON THE BOBST WEBSITE]
Ellen J. Stekert and Americo Paredes (1970) “Foreword” and“Introduction.” Journal of American Folklore 83(328):iiiiv, vix. (Special issue: “The Urban Experience and Folk Tradition”). (Also skim at least one of the pieces in this issue) [AVAILABLE THROUGH BOBST WEBSITE EJOURNALS]
A.L. Lloyd (1961) “The FolkSong Revival.” Marxism Today June, p. 170172.
Wed 14 February
Note: Writing assignment #2 handed out today, due in class next Wednesday, Feb. 21
Bennett Zon (2009) “‘Loathsome London’: Ruskin, Morris, and Henry Davey’s History of English Music (1895).” Victorian Literature & Culture 37:359375
ChangMoo Lee and KunHyuck Ahn (2003) “Is Kentlands Better Than Radburn? The American Garden City and the New Urbanist Paradigms.” Journal of the American Planning Association 69(1):5071.
Jane Jacobs (1961) “Violence in the City Streets: How Our ‘Housing Experts’ Unwittingly Encourage Crime.” Harper’s Magazine, September, pp. 3743.
Samuel Zipp (2012) “Culture and Cold War in the Making of Lincoln Center.” In Manhattan Projects.
WEEK 5—Various counterurban romances—rurality, antiquity
Mon 19 February
No class—Presidents Day
Wed 21 February
Timothy H. Evans (1988) “Folklore as Utopia: English Medievalists and the Ideology of Revivalism.” Western Folklore 47(4):246 R. Murray Schafer, “The rural soundcape,” “From town to city,” and “The industrial revolution” in The Soundscape: OurSonic Environment & the Tuning of the World (1993), pgs. 4370.
James C. Scott (2017) “Introduction: A Narrative in Tatters: What I Didn’t Know.” In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 136.
WEEK 6—Romances cont’d; Commerce
Mon 26 February
John Blacking (1981) “Making Artistic Popular Music: The Goal of True Folk.” Popular Music 1:914.
Katherine Thomson (1965) “Elizabethan Popular Song and the English Musical Tradition.” Marxism Today, November, pp. 337345
Wilfrid Mellers (1942) “Melody and Texture, Mediaeval and Modern.” Scrutiny, Summer, pp. 216.
John Haines (2004) “Living Troubadours and Other Recent Uses for Medieval Music.” Popular Music 23(2):133153.
Wed 28 February
Charles Seeger (1953) “Folk Music in the Schools of a Highly Industrialized Society.” Journal of the International Folk Music Council 5:4044.
Pete Seeger (1956) “Why audience participation?” Sing Out! May pp. 3233.
Jane Chance (1991) Preface, “Inklings and Others,” Studies in Medievalism I3(3):231.
Kirsten Yri (2006) “Noah Greenberg and the New York Pro Musica.” American Music 24(4):421444.
Jonathan Shull (2006) “Locating the past in the present.” Ethnomusicology Forum 15(1):87111.
Helen Nearing & Scott Nearing (1970) The Maple Sugar Book (selections)
Anonymous (1974) “Dr. Ralph Borsodi: Legendary BacktotheLand Figure.” Mother Earth News, March/April.
WEEK 7—Commerce
Mon 5 March
Note: Writing assignment #3 handed out today, due in section Friday
Thorstein Veblen (1988) “Pecuniary Canons of Taste.” In Theory of the Leisure Class.
Georg Simmel (1957[1904]) “Fashion.” American Journal of Sociology 62(6):541558.
Wed 7 March
Willard Rhodes (1956) “On the Subject of EthnoMusicology.” Ethnomusicology Newsletter 7:19.
Irving Kolodin (1954) “The Gramophone Shop, 19281954.” Saturday Review.
Nat Hentoff (1957) “The Major Minors.” Saturday Review.
Edward Tatnall Canby (1946) “Asch, Disc, Union.” Saturday Review, May 25, p. 45.
John S. Wilson (1957) “A Silver Lining in Jazz Reissues.” Saturday Review.
Hans W. Hensheimer (1969) “Music From the Conglomerates.” Saturday Review, Feb. 22, pp. 6164, 77.
Anthony Rooley & Monteverdi (1993) “‘L’humore Universale.” The Musical times 134(1807):490495
Jac Holzman & (1998) “On a Paper Tablecloth a Baroque Label is Born.” In Follow the Music, pp. 97112.
WEEK 8—Spring Break
Mon 12 March
No reading
Wed 14 March
No reading
WEEK 9—Commerce & the Scourge of Tin Pan Alley
Mon 19 March
Keir Keightley (2012) Tin Pan Allegory. Modernism/modernity 19(4):717736.
Alfred Corum (1966) “Music and the Fight for Socialism.” Marxism Today, June, pp. 181.183.
Pete Seeger (19xx) “Why Do You Guys Publish So Much Rubbish?” Sing Out!
Pete Seeger (19xx) “Random Notes.” Sing Out!
Irwin Silber (1950) “The Weavers, New ‘Find’ of the Hit Parade.” Sing Out!
Wed 21 March
Anonymous (1922) “Writer of ‘Home Sweet Home’ was wanderer; romance in songs is good selling point.” The Music Trades, October 14, p. 7.
Hugh Leamy (1929) “Now Come All You Good People.” Collier’s, Nov. 2, pp. 20, 5859. Doron K. Antrim (1946) WhoopandHoller Opera. Collier’s, January 26, pp. 18, 85.
Murray Campbell (1951) “Tin Pan Alley’s Tin Ear.” Collier’s, Feb. 3, pp. 48, 6465.
Allen Churchill (1951) Tin Pan Alley’s Gittar Blues. New York Times Magazine, Jul. 15, p. 8, 36.
Barry Mazor (2015) Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music. (selections)
Norman Cohen (1970) “Tin Pan Alley’s Contribution to Folk Music.” Western Folklore 29(1):920.
WEEK 10—The Culture of the Trade
Mon 26 March
Note: Writing assignment #4 handed out today, due in section Friday
Billboard Magazine archives
Wed 28 March
Tom Paxton (1966) “Folk Rot.” Sing Out!
Ron Radosh (1962) “Commercialism & the Folk Song Revival.” Sing Out!
Abrahams et al (1966) “Folk Music and the Top 40” Sing Out!
Ann Powers (2007) “Selling Out.” In Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America
WEEK 11—One Possible Conclusion
Mon 2 April
Jack Hamilton Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination
Wed 4 April
Jack Hamilton Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination
WEEK 12—One Possible Conclusion (cont’d)
Mon 9 April
Jack Hamilton Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination
Wed 11 April
Jack Hamilton Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination
WEEK 13—Technology & its Discontents
Mon 16 April
Note: Description of final project due in section on Friday
Marek Korczynski (2003) “Music at Work: Towards a Historical Overview.” Folk Music 8(3):314334.
Edward Bellamy (1887) Looking Backward (selections)
Mark M. Smith (2011) “The Garden in the Machine: Listening to Early American Industrialization. In The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Trevor Pinch & Karin Bijsterveld, eds.)
Henry Ford (1922) “Machines and Men.” In My Life and Work. (selections)
Ralph Borsodi (1929) This Ugly Civilization (selections)
Daniel Akst (2013) Automation Anxiety: Where Have All the Jobs Gone? Wilson Quarterly 37(3):
Wed 18 April
Thurston Dart (1954) “Sonorities.” In The Interpretation of Music, pgs. 2958.
WEEK 14—Technology cont’d; How Should Human Beings Sound?
Mon 23 April
Smith, “The blues jumped a mechanical rabbit”
Irwin Kolodin (1957) “The vinyl decade”
Harold Lawrence (1956) “Back to preBach”
Edward Tatnall Canby (1947) “Some highs and lows”
Bertrand Bronson (1956) “Folk song and live recordings”
Wed 25 April
Livio Giuliano (2014) Singing the Middle Ages: Between Scholars & Trotskyists. Transcultural Music Review 18
Percy Grainger (1915) “The Impress of Personality in Unwritten Music” Mauro Uberti and Mark Lindley (1981) “Vocal techniques in Italy in the second half of the 16th century.” Early Music 9(4)
Joel Rudinow, “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive authenticity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52(1):127137.
Mark Anthony Neal (2005) “White Chocolate Soul: Teena Marie and Louis Taylor.” Popular Music 24(3):369380.
Marbybeth Hamilton (2002) “The voice of the blues” History Workshop Journal 54:123143.
Alan Lomax (1968) “The Cantometrics Experiment.” In Folk Song Style and Culture, pp. 1333.
WEEK 15—How Should Human Beings Sound cont’d
Mon 30 April
Joel Wapnick et al (2012) “Preferences for piano versus harpsichord performances in Renaissance and Baroque keyboard music”
W.L. Smolden (1953) Medieval MusicDrama. The Musical Times 94(1330):557560
Edmund A. Bowles (1959) The Role of Musical Instruments in Medieval Sacred Drama. The Musical Quarterly 45(1):6784.
Wed 2 May
JoachimErnst Berendt (1988) The Third Ear (selections)
New York City Department of Environmental Protection Noise Code, March 1998 http://www.nonoise/org/lawlib/cities/newyork.htm
New York City Department of Building Noise Code
Stuart Sim (2007) Manifesto for Silence (selections)
WEEK 16—Another Possible Conclusion
Mon 7 May
Timothy Taylor (2015) “World Music, Value, and Memory.”
Albrecht Riethmüller (2008) Music Beyond Ethics. Archiv für Vusikwissenschaft 65(3):169176.