MIT: course on women & folk music

Subject: MIT: course on women & folk music
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 18 Jan 12 - 12:13 AM

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has started a thing called "OpenCourseware": "MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity."

I happened on one course entitled, Issues of Representation: Women, Representation, and Music in Selected Folk Traditions of the British Isles and North America, a graduate level course taught in Fall 2005 by Prof. Judith Tick and Prof. Ruth Perry.

Course Description

"This subject investigates the special relation of women to several musical folk traditions in the British Isles and North America. Throughout, we will be examining the implications of gender in the creation, transmission, and performance of music. Because virtually all societies operate to some extent on a gendered division of labor (and of expressive roles) the music of these societies is marked by the gendering of musical repertoires, traditions of instrumentation, performance settings, and styles. This seminar will examine the gendered dimensions of the music - the song texts, the performance styles, processes of dissemination (collection, literary representation) and issues of historiography - with respect to selected traditions within the folk musics of North America and the British Isles, with the aim of analyzing the special contributions of women to these traditions. In addition to telling stories about women's musical lives, and studying elements of female identity and subjectivity in song texts and music, we will investigate the ways in which women's work and women's cultural roles have affected the folk traditions of these several countries."

It's a seminar so there's no lecture content, but along with the reading (and listening) list, questions for discussion are listed. An interesting assortment of stuff.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: MIT: course on women & folk music
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Jan 12 - 02:31 AM

The MIT Open Courseware offering has been available for quite some time. I have been rather disappointed that what's up for most of the subjects offered, that I've looked at, consist mostly of "slide shows" (@$#& PowerPoint) that are (sometimes) a useful adjunct to a good lecture or class interactions at a seminar; but the lectures/discussions usually were omitted.

What's available for viewing and download is, of course, largely up to the individual prof in charge of the course, so there is some variation. The web pitches are largely outlines for seminars and/or class lectures, but don't provide the "interaction" expected from a live attendance and hence require a lot of work to even begin to approximate the real thing. (That may have changed some since my last look, of course.)

Similar open course offerings are to be found from a number of universities, with (IIRC) Yale and I believe Cal Tech being schools (along with MIT) who first began offering some. It has been a while since I took a look at any of them, so my recollection is a little hazy.

I seem to remember that the "home pages" for the MIT courses included some history of the open course concept, and/or identified the "consortium" of schools participating, either of which would give some description of other schools with similar stuff where you might be interested in looking. Maybe a couple of gups (Go-Ups) from the link posted would find information of that sort, assuming it's still there.

John

Subject: RE: MIT: course on women & folk music
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 18 Jan 12 - 10:11 AM

Yeah, in this case what you get is a pretty good study guide: reading and listening recommendations, with questions to direct your study.

This is "courseware", not online courses, so it's material that is not specially designed for online use, or for completeness in the absence of the live presentation of the instructor (to say nothing of class interaction).

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: MIT: course on women & folk music
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 18 Jan 12 - 11:16 AM

The University of WASHINGTOn used to offer these engineering courses on TV ..they were for the students but they were amazed to find out how popular they were..just a not very dynamic professor expounding on stuff...mg