This seminar offers a survey of the current state of music theory as an academic discipline, its institutional base, and its ideological superstructure. It will introduce students to the field’s major areas of research and methodological challenges, focusing on three topic clusters: 1) recent and current debates in North American music theory; 2) trends in the discipline in Canada and the U.S. over the past half century; and 3) music-theoretical practices in other parts of the world and the place of North American music theory in a global context.