Spring 2025 First-Year Writing (Barnard) BC1128 section 001

MUSIC IN NARRATIVE

Call Number 00205
Day & Time
Location
TR 11:40am-12:55pm
To be announced
Points 3
Grading Mode Pass/Fail
Approvals Required None
Instructor Elizabeth Weybright
Type LECTURE
Course Description

How and to what ends does literature represent musical form or the feeling of musical encounter? In this course, we will discuss narratives in which music plays a significant role, whether through musical allusion or its sustained thematic presence, or through principles of musical composition and gesture that play in the background, informing a text’s structural flow. We will consider complex resonances between literary narratives and histories of music culture and aesthetics, asking how writers use music to world-build, to characterize, and to situate a text culturally and politically. Throughout the semester, we will pay particular attention to narratives that showcase the musical lives of characters belonging to historically marginalized groups. In doing so, we will question how race, gender, and sexuality intersect with musical histories of aesthetic power. Literary readings may include works by Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and James Joyce. Secondary readings in performance studies and musical aesthetics may include selections by Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Judith Butler, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Maria Edgeworth, and others.

Web Site Vergil
Department First-Year Writing @Barnard
Enrollment 3 students (15 max) as of 9:14PM Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Subject First-Year Writing (Barnard)
Number BC1128
Section 001
Division Barnard College
Section key 20251FYWB1128X001