60% of your course grade will be based on your achievement in three different areas: participation, critical writing, and research. To demonstrate achievement, you will complete tasks and challenges in each of these areas. You may choose from a variety of options listed on the schedule and below. These tasks will be graded on a pass/fail basis (1/2 credit may be given for late or barely passing work at the instructor’s discretion). To achieve an A grade in a given area, you must successfully earn five task credits, so you should strive to complete about fifteen total over the course of the semester, or an average of one per week. Please note that many tasks are tied to a particular class and therefore have a submission deadline, so plan ahead. New tasks may be added during the course of the semester, and you can even propose your own!
Tasks you can do at any time:
- Blackboard engagement [participation]
- Wikipedia improvement [research]
- Interview/oral history [research]
- Concert report [critical writing]
- Write a response paper to a supplemental reading [critical writing]
- Propose your own task!
- Reading Oral Summary [participation]
- Perfect Attendance [participation]
Unit 1 Tasks:
- Bring examples of women in African drumming to class [participation]
- Cross-cultural perspectives paper [critical writing]
- Historiography paper [critical writing]
- Listening and Gender [critical writing]
Unit 2 Tasks:
- Mini-lecture on convent life [participation]
- Female musicians in Renaissance art [research]
- Gender in Medieval lyrics paper [critical writing]
- Search Hildegard’s writings [research]
Unit 3 Tasks:
- Women making music in 19th-century fiction [research]
- “Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn” response paper [critical writing]
- Virtuosa in 17th- and 18th-century Europe [research]
- Men’s and women’s musical spheres [critical writing]
Unit 4 Tasks:
- The “woman composer question” questions [participation]
- Women’s music clubs and orchestras [research]
- Women in opera plots [participation]
- Answers to the “woman composer question” [research]
Unit 5 Tasks:
- Dressing for success (or failure!) [participation]
- Suffrage song analyses [critical writing]
- Chorus girls [research]
Unit 6 Tasks:
- Gender in heavy metal or rap [critical writing]
- How not to write about female musicians: examples [participation]
- Response paper to “Free to Be You and Me” [critical writing]
- Blueswomen: other views [research]
Unit 7 Tasks: