Teaching Philosophy

"Empower the undergraduate." In many ways, this simple, three-word phrase summarizes my philosophy of music pedagogy. Even the most foundational, methods-based course should encourage students to form and share their opinions. Musicology offers a chance to return power to students. It enables them to ask questions about music and its interactions with human and non-human agents alike. Inspired by the work of teacher-activists such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks, I continually experiment with my teaching practices, aiming to find and develop ways in which to build community and encourage under-represented populations to voice their opinions and perspectives. Community building is a worthwhile venture in both core music classes as well as general education electives. In both settings, I encourage students to be aware of their peers as not only music makers and listeners, but also critics and thinkers. Through positive rapport and continual feedback during class discussions, I have found that students are drawn to having new listening experiences and sharing them with their classmates.      

I structure my courses, large and small, around open discussions on a “text”; these may be pieces of academic writing, blog posts, music videos, live performances, or exchanges over social media. As our text is frequently music, I urge students to share not only their intellectual responses but more importantly, their sensual responses—what emotional feedback is evoked by the work? I do this because art serves a dual function: to make people think by making them feel. When teaching Wozzeck, I have student’s identify pitches, themes, and rhythms essential for the opera’s construction. I then take this a step further by asking them what purpose these compositional technologies might serve. What effect does the “Invention on a Rhythm” have on them as spectators? I strive for my students to understand these affective, phenomenological responses. Students react positively to hearing other’s emotional reactions to music. By voicing their opinions, a kind of musical agency is returned to the learners.

Furthermore, I stress drawing on these bodily responses in student writing. When students write short papers comparing two lied settings of the same poem, I have them sing through the pieces (however clumsily) at least once before they begin writing. Even though many students initially view music as an abstract concept, by tying the conceptual to the tangible, the level of student writing improves immensely. 

Aside from motivating students to voice and defend their opinions, I believe the most helpful strategy for a teacher is to meet the students at their level. Even students at a prestigious conservatory might have wide gaps of musical knowledge. By taking the time to do regular, informal assessment over the course of the semester, I continually gauge student comprehension of the material. Meeting students at their level also means making connections to the contemporary musical and social landscape. In general education classes, it is essential to remember that most of my students will never encounter music in an academic, or even formal, setting again in their lives. Furthermore, the likelihood that students are accustomed to the repertoire considered in these courses is very slim. However, the social and political conditions that influenced the creation and decline of these styles are, in many cases, still present in our twenty-first-century lives. Rather than simply teaching about Motown Records and respectability politics, by connecting this with Kanye West’s feuds with Taylor Swift and Beck, students come to understand that history is not only our past, but also our present.

Opening up about emotional and critical responses to music is a scary thing; these reactions are, by their very nature, subjective phenomena. By acting as a moderator for discussions and commentator for written work, I help students realize that frequently they share more opinions than they might have originally thought. Some students like country; others prefer rock and roll. But they all live in a world shaped by shared musical experiences. By finding common ground and understanding points of difference, I aim to produce members of an informed global citizenry. 

Courses Taught 

Eastman School of Music

• Music Since 1900

  • This master’s level course is designed to provide a solid grasp of twentieth-century European and American art music by offering both broad coverage of significant works and in-depth examination of the era’s diverse musical trends, social and political environments, and aesthetic and cultural controversies. As this is an accelerated summer course, time will not permit a comprehensive study of all trends. Rather, by stopping in on some of the era’s most important musical thinkers—including Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Britten, Oliveros, Carter, and Saariaho—this course. Through textual, score-based, and sonic study, we will analyze and question the meaning of existing rubrics for the study of music since 1900, as well as develop new ones appropriate for diverse repertoires. This approach will allow students to consider what music history and musicology can do for them as practicing musicians and educators.

  • Syllabus available.

• Borders, Boundaries, and Barriers in Twentieth-Century Music

  • In the twentieth century, social, cultural, political, and artistic limits were continually pushed and surpassed by musicians and non-musicians alike. Western powers were exposed to global cultures in a way that had been impossible a century earlier, all while subjugated people within the West campaigned for equal rights. As imperialism’s cultural pursuits became even more apparent, people historically excluded from “Western art music” were able to negotiate their place within an increasingly globalized world. How did these shifts of musical power influence composition and performance? And how did formal, generic, and stylistic limits shift in response to exoticism, feminism, the civil rights movement, and (post-)colonialism? This course attempts to answer these questions through the study of representative works by composers from late Romanticism to the present day, including Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Britten, Glass, Oliveros, Saariaho, Golijov, and others.

  • Syllabus, lesson plans, and teaching video available

Michigan State University

• Music, Gender, & Sexuality [Music Major Section]

  • With music as our primary source-text, we will focus on the ways in which music has been a means to negotiate Western culture’s construction of gender and sexuality from the seventeenth century to the present. The aim of the course is to expand the student’s ability to interpret Western music and how it serves to transmit, transform, and subvert ideas about human identity using musical and extra-musical resources.

  • Syllabus and Lesson Plans available

• Music, Gender, & Sexuality [General Education Section]

  • With music as our primary source-text, we will focus on the ways in which music has been a means to negotiate Western culture’s construction of gender and sexuality from the seventeenth century to the present. The aim of the course is to expand the student’s ability to interpret Western music and how it serves to transmit, transform, and subvert ideas about human identity using musical and extra-musical resources. As a General Education course, this class encourages students to engage critically with their own society, history, and culture(s); it also encourages students to learn more about the history and culture of other societies. We will focus on key ideas and issues in human experience; encourage appreciation of the roles of knowledge and values in shaping and understanding human behavior; emphasize the responsibilities and opportunities of democratic citizenship; highlight the value of the creative arts of literature, theater, music, and arts; and alert us to important issues that occur among peoples in an increasingly interconnected, interdependent world.

  • Syllabus, Lesson Plans, and Student Evaluations available

Courses Assisted

Eastman School of Music

• Musical Markets and Performance Politics, 1750-1880

  • Lesson plans available

• Other People, Other Sounds: Music and Meaning, 800-1750

  • Lesson plans and lecture video available

• Music and Society: 1880 to Present Day

  • Lesson plans, discussion videos, lecture video, and student evaluations available

• Music and Society: 1730-1880

  • Lesson plans, lecture video, and student evaluations available

Michigan State University

• Great Works of Western Music [Online]

  • Student evaluations available

• Popular Music in 20th Century American Musical Life

  • Lesson plans and student evaluations available

• Popular Music, Media, and Identity in the 1980s

  • Lesson plans and student evaluations available

• Global Music Cultures

  • Lesson plans and student evaluations available

Appalachian State University

• Music History and Style III: 1880 to 2000

  • Lecture video available