Popular music functions as a sacred text for many in the world today. For some it is an adjunct to participating in organized religion and for others an alternative to such participation, providing moments of transcendence outside traditional "religious" channels. Drawing on examples from both Western and Non-Western case studies this course will examine various critical approaches to and discourses surrounding popular music and spirituality (including aspects of ritual and religion and manifestations of techno-spirituality), virtuality, immateriality, and the ineffable. We will address questions dealing with the metaphysics of music and sound in regards to changing technologically driven concepts of identity, community, and location as well as increasing manifestations of religious and spiritual content in recent mainstream pop and hip hop. The course will draw from readings by noted poststructuralist scholars in aesthetics, philosophy, sound studies, sociology, and media studies including Theodore Adorno, Philip Auslander, Jean Baudrillard, Erik Davis, Stuart Hall, Katherine Hayles, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Henry Jenkins, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Bruno Latour, Gerald Raunig, and Bernard Steigler among others.