In the Classroom

In the spirit of new beginnings, here are some of the new College Division liberal arts, music history, and theory courses being offered this academic year.

American Studies: August Wilson’s American Experience
Renée Baron
August Wilson’s 10-play “Century Cycle” focuses on each decade of the 20th century. This class uses the plays and other texts to explore the historical, literary, and cultural context of each play to gain insight into Wilson’s creative offering and— more broadly—African American life. In addition to Wilson’s plays, texts may include Harold Cruse’s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.

Asian American Literature and Film
Anthony Lioi
Asian American literature and film emerged in the 1960s, when disparate groups from East and South Asia created a cultural alliance in the U.S. This course explores core questions emerging from that alliance: What does it mean to represent Asian American experience in literature and film? What is American about this work in the context of the Asian diasporas in English-speaking countries? What place does Asian American art have in global literature and film?

The Avant Garde of the Soviet World
Joel Sachs
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a think tank for creative artists until Joseph Stalin began to stifle dissent in the early 1930s, forbidding anything other than the eternally optimistic socialist realism. When he died in 1953, repression relaxed but resumed when Nikita Khrushchev was deposed in 1964. It was too late: Young composers kept writing what they wanted, and eventually some were heralded as among the most important composers of the later 20th century. This course explores those innovators.

Contemporary American Literature
Anthony Lioi
This class begins with a survey of American literature after 1960 through the framework of postmodern culture with special emphasis placed on postmodern aesthetics, the fiction of social protest, and the rise of fantastika. Students will develop independent research projects related to 21st-century American literature and new media, including video games, streaming narratives, and social media.

From Classical to Romantic: Music and Society Around 1800
Edgardo Salinas
Using works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as case studies, this course explores the era’s socio- historical context and how the momentous transition from classicism to romanticism reshaped listening practices and musical discourse. It also considers the careers of influential figures who have been sidelined in traditional narratives of Western art music, including Joseph Bologne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) and George Bridgetower, and how they balanced political engagement with artistic practice amid debates around race, rank, and identity.

Making Modernity, Good and Bad: 19th-Century Europe
Gonzalo Sanchez
Social, cultural, and economic development in Europe from 1789 to the eve of World War I shaped the modern world, for better and for worse. Drawing from works by authors such as Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, and Claire de Duras, this course offers a thematic survey of the historical movements and ideas that inform modernity’s equivocal legacy.

Music in New York City
Martin Verdrager
New York City is the most diverse city in the United States—nearly 200 languages are spoken here, including indigenous languages and numerous dialects from regions all over the globe. It is that spirit of plurality that has made New York a national leader in communication and creativity, including theater, journalism, literature, visual art, fashion, and, of course, music. This class explores where music and New York’s vibrant cultural heritage intersect.

19th-Century German Art Song
Loretta Terrigno
Focusing on song collections by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf, this course compares definitions of the “song cycle,” “song bouquet,” and “songbook,” as well as “song pairs,” and seeks evidence for these types in Schumann’s Dichterliebe (Op. 48) and Frauenliebe und Leben (Op. 42); Brahms’ Op. 3 songs, Die schöne Magelone (Op. 33), and Vier ernste Gesänge (Op. 121); and Wolf’s Mörike-lieder and Italienisches Liederbuch, among others.

The Stories of Music History
Elizabeth Weinfield
From musicology’s 19th-century origins to the advent of social history and birth of the New Musicology and more recent scholarship addressing the evolving canon, this course introduces the many narratives that form the discipline of musicology.

Viennese Song and Fortepiano
Audrey Axinn
Using Juilliard’s Viennese 1820s fortepiano, this performance seminar surveys lieder by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert with a focus on vocal and pianistic performance practice of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Students complete the class equipped with knowledge and techniques they can draw upon throughout their lives as performers and teachers.