Undergraduate Programme and Module Handbook 2024-2025

Module MUSI2791: Music and Place

Department: Music

MUSI2791: Music and Place

Type	Open	Level	2	Credits	20	Availability	Available in 2024/2025	Module Cap		Location	Durham

Prerequisites

None

Corequisites

None

Excluded Combination of Modules

None

Aims

To encourage students to think critically – as well as generously – about the idea of place in relation to music: How does our sense of place shape the way we engage with music, and vice versa? Does music help us understand place? How do we – or perhaps, can we – define a place through listening and/or music-making?
To provide students with opportunities to develop media skills beyond the written formats
To give students opportunities to collaborate with their peers outside of the music performance settings

Content

Students will be introduced to philosophies of place in order to explore questions of sense making and place making through music.
Lectures will be structured thematically to allow a wide range of case studies (subject to staff expertise and availability). Topics may include: place and displacement, trans-/regionalism, urbanity vs rurality, and physicality and virtuality.
Training on storytelling and making a podcast will be embedded within the module to prepare students for the summative assignment of an audio essay.

Learning Outcomes

Subject-specific Knowledge:

To explore current research on ideas of place in music studies
To consider possibilities of combining historical (e.g. archival, historiographical, bibliographical) and ethnographical (e.g. documentary, participant-based, ethnographical) methods
Through the summative audio essay, to engage with music and sounds critically and analytically but without necessarily needing to employ traditional written notations

Subject-specific Skills:

To further develop the writing and/or audio ethnographical skills acquired in other/complementary modules of their degree programme(s)
To connect critical and thematic concepts explored in the module with their own listening and/or music-making practices elsewhere

Key Skills:

The ability to listen to and think critically about music and music’s place in the world
The ability to construct a cohesive narrative and/or argument informed by an engagement with music
The ability to collaborate with their peers

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

enter text as appropriate for the module

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Activity	Number	Frequency	Duration	Total/Hours
Lecture	10	Weekly	2 hours	20
Tutorial	1	Termly	15 mins	0.25
Reading/preparation	10	Weekly	1	179.75
TOTAL				200

Summative Assessment

Component: Audio essay		Component Weighting: 100%
Element	Length / duration	Element Weighting	Resit Opportunity
audio essay (with appropriate music/sound examples and accompanied by a transcript), completed either individually (1500 words in transcript) or in pairs (2,250 words in transcript). A short statement of division of work is required for co-produced submission.	1500 words in transcript	100%	yes

Formative Assessment:

1 x audio essay proposal (500 words)

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University