Thursday, September 12 – Course Introduction; Why Study Popular Music?

Thursday, September 19 – Soundscape: Sonic Ecologies

• R. Murray Schafer – ‘Introduction’ and ‘Listening’ from The Soundscape
• B. Truax – Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (Please read the Introduction to the First Edition. Also look at least three entries on the site.
• A.Y. Kelman – “Rethinking the Soundscape: A Critical Genealogy of a Key Term in Sounds Studies”, The Senses and Society, Volume 5, Number 2, July 2010 , pp. 212-234(23)

Thursday, September 26 – Musicking and Music

• C. Small – “Prelude” from Musicking (Wesleyan University Press, 1998)
• A. Bennett – “Towards a Cultural Sociology of Popular Music”, Joun

Listening Exercise Assignment due before class, 12 noon.

Thursday, October 3 – Inside/Outside: Music in The Street and The Home

• K. Keightley – “‘Turn it down!’ she shrieked!: Gender, Domestic Space and High Fidelity, 1948-59”, Popular Music, Vol 15 (1996), No. 2, 149-177
• B. LaBelle – “Pump up the Bass – Rhythm, Cars and Auditory Scaffolding”, Senses & Society, Vol 3 (2008), Issue 2, 187-204
• K . Bijsterveld – “Acoustic Cocooning: How the Car became a Place to Unwind”, Senses & Society, Vol 5 (2010), Issue 2, p 189-211

Thursday, October 10 – Music/Noise in the City: Managing Sound

• E. Cockayne – “Noisy” from Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770 (Yale University Press, 2007)
• L. Radovac – “The ‘War on Noise’: Sound and Space in La Guardia’s New York”, American Quarterly,Vol. 63, No. 3 (2011).
• K. Bijsterveld – “The City of Din: Decibels, Noise and Neighbors in the Netherlands, 1910-1980”, Osiris, 2nd Series, Vol. 18, Science and the City (2003), pp. 173-193.
• K. Bijsterveld – “Listening to Machines: Industrial Noise, Hearing Loss and the Cultural Meaning of Sound”, ISR:Interdisciplinary Science Review, Vol 31 (2006), No. 4.

Thursday, October 17 – Music and Architecture: Background Music/Music as Force

• J. Sterne – “Sounds like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space”
• L. Hirsch – “Weaponizing Classical Music: Crime Prevention and Symbolic Power in the Age of Repetition”, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Vol 19, Issue 4, 342-358.
• M. Akiyama – “Silent Alarm: The Mosquito Youth Deterrent and the Politics of Frequency”. Canadian Journal of Communication, 35.

Thursday, October 24 – Music and Ethnography: Listening on the Ground

• S. Cohen – “Sounding Out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place” from The Place of Music, Leyshon, A., Matless, D., and Revill, G. (eds), New York: The Guilford Press, 1998.
• S. Cohen – “Ethnography and Popular Music Studies”, Popular Music, Vol 12 (1993), No 2.

Thursday, November 5 – Subcultures and Scenes

• Dick Hebdige – “Signifying Practice”, excerpt from Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Routledge: London 1979.
• A. McRobbie – “Settling Accounts with Subcultures” from On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (London:Pantheon, 1990)
• Will Straw – “Systems of Change, Logics of Articulation”, Cultural Studies

Thursday, November 14 – Music, Space and Embodiment: Gender, Clubs, Collecting, and Festivals

• W. Straw – “Sizing Up Record Collections: Gender and Connaisseurship in Rock Culture”
• G. St John – “Neotrance and the Psychedelic Festival”, Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Culture, Vol 1 (2009), No 1.
• M. Bayton – “Women and the Electric Guitar“, Sexing the Groove

Thursday, November 21 – Music, Space and Belonging: The ‘hood and The Scene

• M. Foreman – “Represent: Race, Space and Place in Rap Music”,Popular Music, Vol 19 (2000), No. 1, 65-90.
• P. Gilroy – “It Ain’t Where You’re From It’s Where You’re At: The Dialectics of Diaspora Identification” from Third Text.

Thursday, November 28 – Music and The City: The Hardcore Continuum

• Simon Reynolds – Essays on the Hardcore Continuum, Wire Magazine (please read all seven…they’re short!)
• Colloquium on the “Hardcore” continuum, here, here, and here.
  Site analysis due before class, 12 noon.

Thursday, December 5 – Toronto: Music and Everyday Life

• No readings.
  In class exercise based on site analyses and soundscapes.