Key Information
About the content
What is a musician’s response to the condition of the world? Do musicians have an obligation and an opportunity to serve the needs of the world with their musicianship? At a time of crisis for the classical music profession, with a changing commercial landscape, a shrinking audience base, and a contraction in the number of professional orchestras, how does a young musician construct a career today? Are we looking at a dying art form or a moment of reinvigoration? In this course we will develop a response to these questions, and we will explore the notion that the classical musician, the artist, is an important public figure with a critical role to play in society. The course will include inquiry into a set of ideas in philosophy of aesthetics; a discussion about freedom, civil society, and ways that art can play a role in readying people for democracy; discussion on philosophy of education as it relates to the question of positive social change; and an exploration of musical and artistic initiatives that have been particularly focused on a positive social impact. Guiding questions for this course inquiry will include: - How can classical music effect social change? - How has music made positive change in communities around the globe? - What can the field of classical music learn from other movements for social change? - How have educators and philosophers thought about the arts and their connection to daily contemporary life? Each class will explore one critical question through lectures, discussions, interviews, or documentaries.
Syllabus
- Week 1 - Welcome to Music and Social Action
Learn what this course is about, who's teaching it, and other ways you can explore this topic. Meet and greet your peers as well! - Week 2 - What is Art and How Do We Experience It?
In this module, we will discuss philosophers John Dewey and Maxine Greene, and their respective views on the possibilities contained within aesthetic experiences. How can aesthetic experience meaningfully contribute to public life? - Week 3 - Democracy and the Arts, Part 1
How can artistic and aesthetic experiences make a more engaged public? Is there a connection between individual transformative experiences with art and any broader societal impact? What is the role of the artist in a democracy? - Week 4 - Democracy and the Arts, Part II
How have we conceived of the artist's role in American society? What are examples of artists furthering civil society? How do we continually imagine fulfilling the promise of a democracy, embracing Maxine Greene's notion that it is always unfinished? - Week 5 - Arts and Urban Renewal
How have the arts been a driving force for change in American cities? What are the potentials and pitfalls when positioning artists in this role? This class will pursue these questions through a series of case studies, including a video tour of arts organizati... - Week 6 - 20th Century Artists and Social Commitment
This class will explore examples of artists from the past hundred years who have been committed to making positive contributions to political or social issues of their time. - Week 7 - 21st Century Artists and Social Commitment
This class will involve a discussion with performing musicians and a look at examples of artists and musicians from the past hundred years who have been committed to making positive contributions to political or social issues of their time. - Week 8 - Creating Social Action
In this final lecture, we will discuss traditions of social action, and how artists work toward building civil society. - Week 9 - Final Reflection
One of the primary goals of this course has been to explore the connections between key concepts from the philosophy of aesthetics, historical examples of musicians who worked toward social action, and contemporary artistic initiatives. This final response is ...
Instructors
Sebastian Ruth
Visiting Lecturer in Community Engagement
Yale School of Music
Content Designer
Platform
Coursera is a digital company offering massive open online course founded by computer teachers Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller Stanford University, located in Mountain View, California.
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I enjoyed this course and learned a great deal about music and social action. I was impressed with the professor's knowledge and enjoyed the videos he showed and discussed. All in all a really good course! I would like to see this professor give a course on how the instruments of an orchestra come together for different pieces of music.
I enjoyed this course and learned a great deal about music and social action. I was impressed with the professor's knowledge and enjoyed the videos he showed and discussed. All in all a really good course! I would like to see this professor give a course on how the instruments of an orchestra come together for different pieces of music.
A highly recommended course for humanity!!! High level of instruction in a way that everything that you think and write (for assignments) is always important. The readings will help you further understand yourself as a human and realize your role into your society. Thank you!!!
The Course was very interesting to me. I have learned a lot particularly about the roots of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, which was not so clear to me."Harlem Nocturne" was a very interesting reading to me that tells the amazing story of three black woman artists in the 1940s and their impact on the American Civil Rights Movement by Black Power: young, gifted and black (Nina Simone)."Art as Experience" by John Dewey is a very inspiring standard oeuvre about the function of art in a modern society. Art and culture are essential to the development of a peaceful way of living together based on respect and mutual understanding for each other within a society and more than that; this must be seen and explicitly recognized by politicians and politicians (John F. Kennedy).The only thing that should be considered in the future is the extensive use of peer-graded-assignments as element in the weekly course reviews. This is critical to me because the participation in the weekly discussion forums was very limited.Nevertheless, the course participation was all in all a pretty good learning experience.
It is a course at first somewhat complex, but then the ideas of great thinkers and participants of social action are unfolding through culture and music. The course is very complete and the way the teacher teaches is very wise. Very practical and useful for our social exercises. Thank you.
It is helpful for understanding a plenty of cultural background ideas and movements, and very important to review classmate's work and feedback.That was quite practical in answering quiz and questions.In order to restore the continuity of artistic work, the ones must seek to equip up knowledge and engaged to the practice and present issues with philosopher's concepts for some improvement,even just for a daily life basics.Homework quickens the course time and lessons,and it reminds me working with urging for greater prospective in problematic issues.
