wickedflea | this is the kind of thing I'm reading

MUSI 845a, Methodological Issues in Music History and Analysis.

Foundational concerns in confronting a piece of music and the context in which it is embedded. These include: the nature and status of the artwork as an object of interpretation; the existence of multiple voices and layers of implication within a single work; the role of the observer in producing aesthetic or cultural meanings; contending constructions of history into which the work might be interwoven. Carl Dahlhaus's Foundations of Music History serves as one of the texts from which we radiate outward to several issues: phenomenological hermeneutics, cultural materialism, structrualism and poststructuralism, postmodernism, claims of aesthetic autonomy and relative autonomy, objectivity and evidence, political interpretation and advocacy positions, and so on.

I love the "and so on." Like it should be obvious where you go from there. Post-poststructuralism, I suppose. Ugh. That's the kind of thing that I don't miss in the least about grad school.