How do we move beyond the canon and teach music in such a way that gives space to students from all different backgrounds and skill levels?
Since my first graduate course in music history, I have been part of the conversations about the canon and how to restructure the course curriculum so to be more inclusive. Obviously that is no easy task, but among the strategies that I have employed, are talking openly about the issue with students, being humble about being a work in progress, and welcoming student participation and input on how to teach music history in a truly inclusive way.
So, when I taught “Western Music: 1950 to Today” at Mount Holyoke College, in Spring 2023, my first thought was “how do I choose what to teach?” Teaching this class offers a fabulous challenge because most of the repertoire is not canonized, and because of this, it offers perhaps strategies to change the way we teach history. Canonized repertoire is easier to teach because it is a well established path, that many have studied and taught, and that many remember from the class they took when they were students. Non-canonized repertoire on the other hand, is though and feels like stepping into the unknown, finding a thread one step at the time, without quite knowing where one is going. And that, I find, the most exciting part of teaching!
This is the timeline that my students made throughout the semester (I learned about it when I was a TA for Sarah Koval). Each of them had to fill out four each (a style, piece, event, and person) and present one to the class. It was a way for them to argue what should be covered in class, and also an opportunity to share about what they are passionate about with their peers.
At the beginning of the semester I proposed to my students the following:
- I will make choices because we need structure, but know so many other things could have been chosen instead, and therefore, this is necessarily a bias syllabus.
- Because of the nature of the course, the huge amount of material, and the brevity of the semester, we won’t be able to cover everything you would like, HOWEVER, I will give you the opportunity throughout to present the pieces/works/genres/musicians who you think we should discuss and we will have a shared timeline for the class and the course.
- I asked students to engage in public musicology and create for their midterms a wikipedia page for a composer part of the Rebalancing the Canon project, who still didn’t have one.
- Students actively participated in discussions around erasure, gender and race discrimination, body shaming, environmental concerns, and issues around sexual abuse. Alongside the music we studied, we also discussed these important issues, and how musicians and scholars engaged with them as well.
This class was an important milestone for me, putting into practice several years of reflection around how to bypass the canon, and how to teach in such a way that students learn both musical and analytical skills, as well as to critically engage with the social issues musicians, composers, and compositions are embedded in. Overall, students loved having a more thematic approach to the class, and being able to discuss openly these issues, while also learning how to critically listen and talk about music in ways that are nuanced and precise.
Visiting Instructor at Mount Holyoke College 2024
- Western Music: 1950 to Today
Primary Instructor, University of Massachusetts Amherst 2020
- Performing and Visual Arts, Residential Academic Program
Aside from working at Mount Holyoke College, I have been gathering lots of teaching experience while working as a Teaching Assistant at both Brandeis University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I supported a range of courses in music history, music appreciation, and film studies. At Brandeis, I have assisted in courses such as Exploring Music, Global Soundscapes, and Music in Western Culture: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. My role in these classes has involved not only aiding students in understanding complex concepts but also creating opportunities for them to engage with music in more critical ways, learning how to write, talk, and engage with music in a nuanced way. I also deliver many guest lectures on topics such as the canon, gender, and the music of 16th and 17th-century Italy, music in convents, music in the courts of Ferrara, as well as on influential films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Entr’acte. As a primary instructor for the Performing and Visual Arts residential academic program at UMass Amherst, I developed and taught an interdisciplinary course that integrated music theory with visual arts, encouraging students to think creatively across subjects.
Teaching Assistant, Brandeis University 2022 – present
- Exploring Music (Prof. Ackley)
- Presented two guests lectures, one on Barbara Strozzi, Gender in Courts, and Music in Convents; and one on the conflicts between the music and the word throughout history.
- Global Soundscapes (Prof. Lee)
- Guest lecture on the relationship between humans and whales, and First Nations’ connections through song with them.
- The Beginner’s Toolbox: Fundamentals of Music Notation and Performance (Prof. Desiato)
- Music in Western Culture: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Prof. Koval)
- Presented three guests lectures on the canon, gender, and 17th century Italy
- Music in Film: Hearing American Cinema (Prof. Ackley)
- Presented two guests lectures, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Entr’acte & Dadaism”
Teaching Assistant, University of Massachusetts Amherst 2019 – 2021
- Music in History of Music, 1900 to Present (Prof. Knyt)
- Music Appreciation (Prof. Yunker and Prof. Ricciardi)
- Music Appreciation (Prof. Lehmberg) and String Quartet (Prof. Chang)
In my teaching, I strive to create an inclusive, engaging learning environment where students feel safe to be vulnerable and have honest and sometimes hard conversations. I encourage students to think deeply and work hard in developing new skills.
Just like I do in my research, in class I bring lots of Interdisciplinary research, asking students to think outside of the box and
Throughout my teaching career, I have consistently strived to create an inclusive, engaging classroom environment that reflect on issues that even professors aren’t able to solve, intentionally drawing them into the real issues that they will need to face in the world.
