In this seminar, graduate students will engage with concepts and debates in sound studies as a way to re-think music education scholarship and practice. As calls for more inclusive, anti-oppressive, and socially just music education intensify (Talbot 2018, U of T Faculty of Music Alumni 2020), current understandings of what constitutes music education and the roles of the music educator and the music education scholar must adapt and expand. Sound studies is an interdisciplinary area of study that examines sound production and reception socio-historically, and it contemplates these processes' material effects. Insights from sound studies offer conceptual and methodological avenues for interrogating and reconceptualizing music education.

Through critical engagement with course readings, seminar discussions, conversations with guest speakers, and individual and group hands-on assignments, students will interrogate current understandings of music education, reflect on their personal and professional connections to course themes, and contemplate new ways forward for music education. Course materials will include sound studies scholarship with different disciplinary focuses, as well as non-academic and audiovisual sources that speak to music education topics and concerns. This selection of course materials will be informed by a conscious effort to amplify the work of scholars from historically underrepresented communities.