Conference Agenda

Organized by the Music and Philosophy Study Group.

At a moment rife with curricular reform and cogent reflection on the pedagogical goals that subtend music studies classrooms, teachers of varied subjects have stressed the value of developing student’s critical and conceptual thinking skills over the rote retention and testing of canonic information. The sociopolitical import of such a shift is registered by the degree to which institutions suture DEI initiatives to matters of pedagogy, so much so that a distinctive articulation of not just what but how and who one teaches is a standard document for employment in today’s marketplace. Given that music’s conceptual, aesthetic, and ethical stakes are increasingly and structurally front of mind when building syllabi or advocating for new curricula, what insights may be gained from a disciplinary perspective that has taken these stakes as its object of study? Or in other words, how might our respective teaching philosophies have something to do with how we teach philosophy?

This panel stages a conversation about teaching music philosophy, broadly conceived, in two parts. First, panelists will respond to a series of questions that will consider their practical experiences in the classroom. Topics addressed will scale from accounts of using specific texts or assignments; to strategies for managing conceptual discussion; to the potential risks presented by philosophy’s own canonic and, at times, obscurant tendencies as a discipline. We will then consider how such experiences stand in relationship to the engaged pedagogy outlined in a short, pre-circulated excerpt from bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. This discussion will provide opportunity for those in the audience to consider and inquire about the gaps between pedagogical theory and praxis, while also offering chance to reflect on the sundry approaches to both the teaching music philosophy and the philosophy of teaching music.