Fall 2024 Jewish Studies UN2155 section 001

Music, Sound, and Antisemitism

Music, Sound, and Antisem

Call Number 15082
Day & Time
Location
MW 11:40am-12:55pm
227 Seeley W. Mudd Building
Points 3
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Tina Fruehauf
Type LECTURE
Method of Instruction In-Person
Course Description

From the Middle Ages to the present, individuals involved in making and writing about music, have engaged in behaviors, creations, and discourses steeped in hatred of Jews. This course examines the various ways in which these individuals have used music to perform and inscribe, symbolize, describe, and editorialize antisemitism. In so doing, it focuses on musicking—a term that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening—in the realms of art music, popular music, and non-Western traditions, as well as of genres that synthesize different styles. It also draws on sound, including language and speech as well as writings such as Wagner’s Judenthum in der Musik (1848−50/69) and Carl Engel’s The Music of the Most Ancient Nations (1864). All of these will serve as a window through which to address the types of Jew-hatred that have become known since the mid-nineteenth century as antisemitism—religious, national and ethnic, political, populist, economic, and institutional—as well as hate speech or “hate talk” and the Jewish responses to it. A basic familiarity with music is helpful for this course, but it is not required as long as there is an openness to listening to music and a commitment to basic aural analysis. You do not need to know Jewish history to take this class, nor do you need to be able to read music. Translations will be provided, and musical analysis will be well explained.

Suggested prerequisites: Music Humanities (Columbia University) or An Introduction to Music (Barnard)

Web Site Vergil
Department Institute for Israel & Jewish Studies
Enrollment 4 students (20 max) as of 3:05PM Monday, December 2, 2024
Subject Jewish Studies
Number UN2155
Section 001
Division Interfaculty
Section key 20243JWST2155W001