Classes

Music 206r: Research Methods in Ethnomusicology: Musical Ethnography

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2022
Regularly offered graduate seminar. An introduction to the theories and methods of ethnomusicological fieldwork, including changing conceptions of the research site, ethical concerns, interview techniques, the ethnography of musical performance, and data analysis and interpretation.

Music 291r: Music and Migration: Mediterranean Mobilities, Past and Present

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2021
Regularly offered seminar co-taught with Kate van Orden. This course provided insight into music's powerful role in human mobility, seeking to break down barriers between historical and ethnographic methods in a study of musical border crossing. The course focused on migration in and from the eastern and central Mediterranean with particular attention to regions part of and/or influenced by the Ottoman Empire, which incorporated a confluence of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds. 

Music 24: Social Engagement through Music: Histories, Economies, Communities

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2019
Undergraduate course co-taught with Carol J. Oja and Michael Uy. This course mounted a semester-long, team-based project to identify and offer professional support to Boston metropolitan-area musicians from communities of color who have recently migrated to the United States. At the same time, we fused direct engagement with musical communities with an intellectual framework for understanding their historical circumstances, economic and political realities, and community needs. Our work focused on a core group of performers drawn from recipients of the Mass Cultural Council's 2018... Read more about Music 24: Social Engagement through Music: Histories, Economies, Communities

Freshman Seminar 61g: Musics in Motion

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2018

Freshman seminar. Music is on the move, traveling across geographical boundaries to reach new and broader audiences. As a result, most locales today support a broad array of musics with different histories and styles. This seminar took a comparative approach to the sounds, settings, and significances of a cross-section of music traditions and their interactions. Along the way, we played the Senegalese sabar drums, dance the tango, and attended two world music concerts. We discussed music's mobility through human migration and virtual channels; the transformative role of musical...

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Music 201b: Current Methods in Ethnomusicology

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2017
Regularly offered graduate seminar. Focuses on introduction to scholarly study of music with emphasis on the history and methodologies of ethnomusicology. Theories of music in culture, field methods, analytical and notational strategies, and critical tools for scholarship.

Music 194r: Performing Musical Difference: Case Studies from the Silk Road Project

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2017

Undergraduate/graduate seminar. This course, a collaborative venture in the classroom with musicians of the Harvard-affiliated Silk Road Ensemble, explored the social processes and ethical challenges of intercultural musical exchange, composition, and performance. For fifteen years, the Silk Road Project and its signature ensemble have sought to enhance intercultural communication through their music making, bringing together performers and composers from across the world to perform together. With an articulated humanistic goal of creating "unexpected connections, collaborations, and...

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American Studies 271: Hyphen-Nation: Multidisciplinary Approach to Ethnicity/Race in U.S.

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2016
Graduate seminar in general education co-taught with Mayra Rivera and Tessa Lowinske Desmond. "Hyphen-Nation" explored the interactions of ethnicity/race, migration, and human rights in shaping twenty-first century United States, with particular attention to the past and present experiences of Latina/o, Asian American, Native American, and African American communities. Students designed case studies from the perspective of their particular disciplines to help fashion a multi-disciplinary approach to the social, cultural, and ethical processes that define nationhood.

Music 194rs: Before West Side Story: Leonard Bernstein's Boston

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2006
Undergraduate/graduate seminar co-taught with Carol J. Oja. This seminar explored the childhood and early career of one of the 20th century’s most renowned musicians and composers. Working in teams, students fused ethnography and archival research to explore the interlinking communities and institutions (Mishkan Tefila synagogue, Boston Latin High School, Harvard class of ’39, the BSO) that shaped Bernstein’s formative years. Students from the course presented papers the following fall for Harvard’s Bernstein Festival, and many of those papers were published in a special issue of the... Read more about Music 194rs: Before West Side Story: Leonard Bernstein's Boston