[UConn Storrs]
The use of music for political ends has a long history, but the 20th and 21st centuries have seen an increasingly common relationship between popular songs and political institutions, ideas, and movements. This course aims to involve you in studying such relationships by engaging you in an exploration of influential political theories from the 17th to the early 20th centuries and the relationships of those theories, if any, to contemporary popular musicians and musical genres such as hip-hop, pop, punk, reggae, folk, and rock. You will also engage, in conjunction with some of your classmates, in an original content analysis examining the possible connections, if any, between the ideas from these influential political theorists and the lyrics of contemporary popular songs that your group chooses. This course is, by its very nature, interdisciplinary; we will draw upon writings and research from normative political theory, empirical political science, psychology, communications, musicology, ethnomusicology, masculinity studies, and public ethics.