MUSI9403GR Advanced Ethnomusicology Seminar
Sound Waves: Oceanic Musicalities and Global Climate Change
The relationship between global climate change and the central role of the ocean in shaping global climate conditions frames the ways in which this seminar explores notions of more-than-human musicalities in oceanic life. Granting musicality and aesthetic preference to the more-than-human undermines notions of human exceptionalism and superiority—a perspective this seminar will use to grapple with the implications of human activity in the ocean. The relationship between humans and the ocean, moreover, will be examined under conditions of human-accelerated global climate change. The seminar will register both extractive capitalist as well as indigenous engagements with the ocean to think through the distinct sensibilities regarding human relationality to the larger biosphere. Readings will engage fundamental questions related to the interrelationships between and among cognition and sentience, aesthetics and cognition, and the human and the more-than-human, among others, and will be drawn from a broad range of humanistic and scientific literature.
Instructor: Kevin Fellezs
Location: 701C Dodge
Time: Thursdays, 4:10 PM to 6:00 PM
