MHST 516 Jazz: Music, Criticism & Interpretation
Selected Readings in Jazz History: Music, Criticism & Interpretation is a seminar-style course, which through readings and discussions engages students in the music, its practitioners, its history, and its aesthetics. The course focuses on selected readings that deal in an insightful and sometimes controversial way with early and modern styles of jazz and performers such as, among others, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. The course explores questions concerning the nature of improvisation, the essence of jazz, how jazz should be evaluated, its history, issues of race, and the music itself. Topics are broad and derive from various disciplines including aesthetics and ontology, historiography, musical analysis, criticism, and interpretation. Course work includes weekly reading (and corresponding listening) assignments, writing summaries, short response papers, and at least one individual presentation.