Fall

The course aims to give a broad basis for the study of popular music.

The course gives an introduction to central approaches in popular music studies. The course takes as a point of departure theoretical perspectives from both the social sciences and the humanities. Specific topics to be explored and discussed include the music industry; readings of popular music texts in relation to race, class, age and gender; music video and popular music in film; ethnographic and historical approaches; world music and world beat; and issues related to globalization.

On completion of the course the student should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:
- knowledge of the relationships between popular musics, mass media, and related technologies and industries.

- competence to productively discuss how cultural and historical conditions are implicated in the development and performance of popular music genres and styles.

- competence to assess the ways in which audiences, fans, and communities contribute to the formation of popular musics.

- competence to evalute specific styles and genres of popular musics in relation to current acadmic debates and paradigms (including for example, gender and sexuality, authenticity, and globalization).

- skills to assess how processes of representation and reception contribute to the creation and mediation of meaning in popular music texts.

- skills to analyze multimedia popular music texts in terms of their structural and stylistic attributes, as well as their relationships to cultural, historical and technological contexts.

Attendance at lectures and seminars.

The students will present their drafts of their term papers orally in seminar form.

All instruction is obligatory. Absence of more than 20% leads to loss of right to take the exam. All mandatory instruction must be completed and approved of before the exam. Approved obligatory activities are valid for 2 semesters after they are completed.

Term paper of ca. 5000-6000 words. This paper will be either a reading (analysis/interpretation) of a specific musical text, or a discussion of a research question in which the task is to set the music within a specific cultural, social or historical context. The term paper can be written in Norwegian or English.

Internal evaluation with at least two examiners.