To enable students to engage critically with the ideas and arguments encountered. To introduce students to a range of ideas about gender and sexuality and explore how they interact with musical texts, practices, and cultures.  To explore the extent to which musical texts, practices, and cultures reflect and/or contribute to prevailing ideologies of gender and sexuality. To develop an understanding of the intersections of history, culture, and music, in terms of ideas about gender and sexuality.

(LO1) Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of a range of theories of gender and sexuality.

(LO2) Students will be able to explain musical texts, practices, or cultures through theories of gender or sexuality.

(LO3) Students will be able to draw connections between theories of gender/sexuality and musical texts/practices/cultures, and to explain how the latter are informed by or help articulate the former.

(S1) Communication (oral, written and visual) - Presentation skills – oral.

(S2) Communication (oral, written and visual) - Presentation skills - written.

(S3) Communication (oral, written and visual) - Listening skills.

(S4) Communication (oral, written and visual) - Academic writing (inc. referencing skills).

(S5) Research skills - All Information skills.

Each week of the semester will explore related musical texts, cultures, or practices through appropriate theories of gender and/or sexuality, using the theories to explain the music and the music to explicate the theory.  Key theorists and scholars in the field (e.g., Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Susan McClary, Sheila Whiteley) will be covered, to address major concepts such as queer theory, musical and audiovisual representation and mediation of genders/sexualities, psychoanalytic readings of musical texts, etc.    The first section of the course explores the main theoretical concepts, the second section investigates ways in which such concepts work "in the music", and the third explores the issues in relation to broader discourses and historical contexts. The case studies used to explore these ideas will be drawn from a range of musical examples covering the historical span of the module, and will vary to allow for staff ex pertise and research, as well as accommodating other modules' material to avoid unnecessary duplication. Examples may include: musical theatre, heavy metal, Christmas music, church music, opera, art song, Weimar cabaret, torch song, mainstream popular music, or avant-garde performance art.

Teaching Method 1 - Lecture
Description: Lectures introduce core concepts and material. Delivered by pre-recorded video if necessary.

Teaching Method 2 - Seminar
Description: Workshops at which students will bring material as directed for sharing and discussion, based on EBL work and set readings. Delivered online if necessary.

Teaching Method 3 - Enquiry Based Learning
Description: Small group work in between seminar sessions, based on material from lectures. Not timetabled: students arrange independent meetings.