Course Description

Music cognition has expanded greatly as a research area in the last fifteen years, following the expansion of cognitive science as a whole. Cross-cultural research has great significance for the investigation of the "musical mind," and suggests the need for a subfield of "cognitive ethnomusicology" that has yet to take definite shape. In this seminar, we will survey the existing literature of cross-cultural and non-Western monocultural studies by music cognition researchers, as well as work by ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and others that examines cognitive processes in music. We will address problems of disciplinary histories and interdisciplinary communications that arise in the study of music cognition, and explore future possibilities for a "cognitive ethnomusicology." In the service of this exploration, we will work as a team to compile an annotated bibliography of readings in cognitive ethnomusicology.

In his history of cognitive science, Gardner identified six component disciplines: philosophy, psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. Of these, anthropology has arguably had the least influence on music cognition studies and on cognitive science overall, yet it is fundamental to ethnomusicology as it exists today. Researchers who study human cognition seem to have no quarrel over the importance of comparative evidence from cultures other than their own, but methodological difficulties have proven difficult to overcome and disciplinary priorities (especially within anthropology, and with it ethnomusicology) have shifted. How can ethnomusicology make good on the promise of comparative study for cognitive science, and how can a fresh infusion of approaches from cognitive science invigorate ethnomusicology and thereby contribute to music cognition studies?

We will be tackling this interdisciplinary subject by way of its component disciplines. Every week we will be covering:

1. specific disciplinary approaches to cognitive studies (most of these will come from cognitive science and music cognition);
2. work in that topic that relates to ethnomusicology (e.g., has a cross-cultural focus); and
3. work in ethnomusicology that relates to the discipline(s) either through similar methods or by providing evidence for or against certain theories.

Readings in the first category will be of the background variety. The instructor will assign some readings in the second and third categories, but the bulk of these will come from your own explorations of the literature that will result in an accumulated bibliography. In many cases, the degree to which material in categories 2 and 3 "relates to" its counterpart will be the object of critical evaluation.

This seminar welcomes an interdisciplinary mixture of those interested in the combination of cognitive studies and music outside of the Western art tradition, including students from musicology, music theory, anthropology, psychology, folkloristics, and cognitive science. The content of the seminar shall be shaped in part by the interests of those who participate.