MUSC 130 Gender and Sexuality in Music

Since Plato first warned against “feminizing” musical modes in his Republic, music has been an important location in Western culture for circulating ideologies of gender and sexuality. This course is an exploration of gender and sexuality in Western music, in both art and vernacular traditions. We will consider such topics as musical constructions of masculinity and femininity; the performance of gender; feminist music criticism; queer theory; castrati; and music as sexual politics.