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Ranging across topics in Western art music, film music, and popular music, this module explores the myriad ways in which gender and sexuality may be encoded in music, especially when music functions in intertextual settings and interacts with the other arts: e.g., in song, on the stage as part of opera and ballet, and in the cinema. The musical articulation of gender and sexuality operates on a number of levels involving composition and/or performance.
Since the 1970s musicologists in this field have particularly focused on expressions of gender and sexuality which are regarded as deviating from a male, heterosexual subject position. Seminars therefore address a wide spectrum of issues such as: the characterisation and performance of gendered roles in opera and ballet; masculinities and popular music; black female blues singers in the 1920s; the role of music in constructing and subverting gendered identities in film. As part of this module students may be advised to attend screenings of opera or other events.
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