Credit Points 10

Coordinator Michelle Stead Opens in new window

Description The cultural frameworks of this subject’s title are both the lenses through which we receive and critique music (gender, class, postcolonialism, sexuality, power etc) and the various types of writing through which we perform these critiques. Through this subject, students will be immersed in literature that engages with music through those big lenses, but will also consider various types of writing. Journal articles, conference papers, liner notes, program notes and reviews each do a distinct kind of cultural work. The assessment tasks will enable students to think about their subject positions and develop both their cultural engagement and capacity to choose appropriate forms for their writing.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Music

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 2 10cp

Check your fees via the Fees page.

Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this subject, students will be able to: 

1. Critically analyse a range of types of writing about music.
2. Examine the cultural, intercultural, and historical contexts of music in a range of types of writing about music.
3. Reflect on the use of lenses such as sexuality, gender, class and postcolonialism in music criticism, and begin to utilise these lenses in their own critical writing.
4. Critique the subject position of a variety of types of writing about music, and acknowledge their own subject positions in writing about music.
5. Demonstrate competence in a range of forms of music criticism.
6. Realise their own cultural critiques using musical analysis.

Subject Content

1. Critical analysis of a range of writing types used for various genres and styles of music.
2. The relationship of cultural, intercultural, and historical contexts of music to various types of music criticism.
3. The use of lenses such as sexuality, gender, power, class and postcolonialism in music criticism.
4. Constructions of subjectivity in music criticism.
5. Musical analysis as cultural critique.