Research Interests:
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political... more
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political dimensions of their lives can be critically examined. Lise Vaugeois argues that creating such a framework would enhance their capacity to thrive as musicians and to function responsibly and
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Music Education, Musicology, Aesthetics, Politics, and 3 moreIdeology, Pedagogy, and Democracy
Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals within a narrow... more
Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals within a narrow framework, one that is reinforced by the ...
Research Interests:
reason, thus conceived, is a kind of social contract. It is a means of effecting changes in self and society that is colored and shaped by the constitutive goals, standards, and practices of the democratic societies in question. Included... more
reason, thus conceived, is a kind of social contract. It is a means of effecting changes in self and society that is colored and shaped by the constitutive goals, standards, and practices of the democratic societies in question. Included among those constitutive goals, standards and practices are prior and existing standards of truth, beauty, and justice. (4) The limits of Woodford’s perspective come vividly into view when we consider how such putatively disinterested concepts as “existing standards of truth, beauty, and justice” function in the context of colonial relationships. For colonized peoples, Western standards of truth and beauty have functioned, not as “normal,” but as normative and “normalizing.” Mi’kmaq writer, Marie Battiste (2005), articulates it this way: Universality underpins cultural and cognitive imperialism, which establishes a dominant group’s knowledge, experience, culture, and language as the universal norm. Dominators Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music ...
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In the following study I explore the role of musical practices in the making of different sensibilities. Beginning with the founding of colonial musical institutions in the late nineteenth century in Canada and ending with a consideration... more
In the following study I explore the role of musical practices in the making of different sensibilities. Beginning with the founding of colonial musical institutions in the late nineteenth century in Canada and ending with a consideration of the ideals and subjectivities embodied in a 2008 concert at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, I take up the education of feeling as it is rehearsed into being through various musical practices and juxtapose notions of identity with actual material and social relations. Anchored as it is in particular physical locations, my project draws on spatial analysis, discourse analysis and historical contextualization. The study is a genealogy of music education in Canada with music education referring to the institutional settings in which professional musicians and music educators are taught; public school music programs; and public celebrations of national identity in which music is employed with the goal of enjoining participants in particular his...
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In recent years, music educators have become interested in linking music education practices, programs and projects to issues of social justice. However, theoretical approaches to conceptualizing the problem or to developing strategic... more
In recent years, music educators have become interested in linking music education practices, programs and projects to issues of social justice. However, theoretical approaches to conceptualizing the problem or to developing strategic interventions have yet to occur within our field. In this paper, I argue that to address social justice we need theoretical tools oriented to injustice, its causes and its manifestations. Addressing injustice means engaging with the political, locating ourselves historically and coming to terms with our implicatedness in injustice. Critical exploration of our positionality and our philosophical assumptions is vital to this enterprise. Without such critiques we risk getting caught up in discourses of charity—discourses that too often result in ‘feel good ’ projects that valorize the giver while maintaining the inferior position of the receiver. Discourses of charity do not require us to ask how we have come to be in a position of ‘superiority ’ relative...
The author presents a genealogy of gendered and raced relations of power in the development of classical music institutions in colonial Canada, noting how institutions come to be established, symbolically and materially, as White property... more
The author presents a genealogy of gendered and raced relations of power in the development of classical music institutions in colonial Canada, noting how institutions come to be established, symbolically and materially, as White property within a patriarchal, White supremacist framework. The author focuses on the roles of White bourgeois women in proliferating classical music institutions, noting how gendered identities constrain their possibilities, while raced and classed identities allow them to attain status as exalted members of the nation. The genealogy illustrates a persistent relationship between exalted White identities, notions of “the arts” as signifiers of “civilizational superiority,” and their uses to rationalize material entitlement and its corollaries: dispossession, domination, and exploitation. Political and pedagogical implications of the analysis close the chapter.
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the... more
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the music? In a recent publication, I write about ...
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This chapter addresses what might appear to be disparate themes: evaluation as ranking; ongoing colonial processes that in order to maintain their force are dependent on an internalization of hierarchies of who counts as human; and... more
This chapter addresses what might appear to be disparate themes: evaluation as ranking; ongoing colonial processes that in order to maintain their force are dependent on an internalization of hierarchies of who counts as human; and structures of formal schooling as processes of subjectification that produce docile, obedient subjects. The intention is to generate “thoughts of the outside” by taking seriously the rejection of evaluation practices and associated priorities of authorized schooling by young people pursuing music learning in “abject spaces.” These young people, often labeled as “at risk” within the school system, not only reject the label but also reject the role of schooling in preparing them to become part of dominant social, political, and economic structures that they experience as hostile and oppressive. By exploring the fault lines made visible by looking from the outside at existing dominant educational frameworks, the chapter seeks to highlight structural relation...
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the... more
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the music? In a recent publication, I write about ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the... more
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the music? In a recent publication, I write about ...
Research Interests:
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political... more
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political dimensions of their lives can be ...
Research Interests:
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political... more
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political dimensions of their lives can be ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals within a narrow... more
Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals within a narrow framework, one that is reinforced by the ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the... more
How do we introduce important but challenging social issues, such as relations of power and the forms of oppression that affect so many people's lives, in a field which so often defines itself as apolitical and just about the music? In a recent publication, I write about ...
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political... more
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political dimensions of their lives can be critically examined. Lise Vaugeois argues that creating such a framework would enhance their capacity to thrive as musicians and to function responsibly and
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political... more
It is important to create a framework in the education of professional musicians, whether these musicians are students of music education, performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, or conducting, in which the political dimensions of their lives can be ...