ANTHRO 106G Issues and History in Popular Music
This page describes the General Education course, ANTHRO 106G Issues and History in Popular Music. Includes the learning outcomes, topics covered, delivery format and timetable.
Schedule
Schedule A: Music, Art and Contemporary Society
Semester
Semesters One and Two
Campus
City Campus
Note: This course does not satisfy the General Education requirements for BMus (or BMus conjoints) or BPerfArts.
This course covers popular music styles, artists, culture and issues such as:
- Genre
- Rhythm and timbre
- Industrial controls
- Dance styles
- Politics
- Music videos
- Sales process
- Emotional effect
- Race
- Gender
The purpose of this course is to:
- Introduce strategies and the importance of studying Popular Music from an academic perspective.
- Approach a broad history of Popular Music looking at key styles and periods.
- Communicate current understandings of Popular Music from a range of theoretical, methodological and historical perspectives.
- Help you develop key skills including reading, writing, and critical thinking.
- Get you to apply critical thinking to something with which you are familiar.
You should take this course if you:
- Love music.
- Would like to try academically exploring popular music.
- Want to know more about rock, hip hop, funk, soul, techno, dance, punk, etc.
- Are interested in learning about popular music history.
- Want to develop your critical thinking and academic writing skills.
After finishing the course, you should be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of some of the key decades and sub-genre of popular music.
- Apply theoretical perspectives of race, gender and power to genre and historical periods of popular music.
- Understand some of the key research and academic writing on popular music.
- Demonstrate skills in reading, note taking, critical thinking and writing at the appropriate level.
- Music style (genre, performance)
- Power (class, money, the music industry)
- Gender
- Rock ‘n’ roll
- The 60s, 70s and 80s
- Nu-rock, grunge, and alternative
- Hip hop
- Soul, funk and R&B
- Disco and dance
In 2011, ANTHRO 106 and ANTHRO 106G has the lecture times of Mondays 4-6 in Semester One and Thursdays 4-6 in Semester Two.
You are also required to attend a weekly 1-hour tutorial session. You can select a tutorial time through CECIL (there are a range of times available).
- There is no course textbook. Instead there is a required article to be read each week.
- The course readings are available on both CECIL and Voyager. You may download and/or print them at your leisure.
- Please read the readings in the week listed in the Lecture Program.
- You will learn the most by doing the readings for a lecture before attending the lecture. Readings also provide the basis for discussions in tutorials.
- Supplementary readings, hand-outs, and websites etc will sometimes be posted on CECIL.
- A class website will have helpful extras, a discussion forum, and web links.
Kirsten Zemke-White
Email: k.zemke@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 88415
From Course Evaluations:
"The lectures were captivating and entertaining, I enjoyed the presentation of the lectures the most. The humor and providing different people's views on music was helpful. Also, giving examples of music for outside of class which illustrated the points of the lecture was great! The videos in tutorials were full of information.
"The comprehensive slides in lectures accompanied by music and commentary have made each lecture extremely interesting so I have actually wanted to be there and felt like I would be missing out if I wasn't, as well as catering for different learning styles and preventing the lull occurring in other 2-hour lectures.
"The compulsory and extra readings and recommended websites have also been great. I already loved music and wanted to know more about its history but now I am reading and watching everything I can myself and applying other things to music and its social impact.
"Overall, a great course."
