Cornell to offer music course centered around ‘black-queer-feminist’ identities

During the 2025 spring semester, Cornell University plans to offer an “Ethics of Listening” class centered around “Black-Queer-Feminist” identities.

According to the course description, the class aims to promote students’ understanding of music by emphasizing musical experiences’ impact on students’ “feeling and knowing.”

“This course will explore modes of listening across a wide variety of musical genres and traditions, past and present, considering the ways people hear music differently in a broad range of contexts,” the description reads. “Students will reflect critically on their own listening paradigms, on the assumptions and preconceptions that affect how we translate what we hear into feeling and knowing, and on the stakes of those translations.”

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The class, intended for graduate students, also emphasizes a “black queer ethic of care” and stresses the “power dynamics” associated with listening to music.

“The intention of the course is to develop our critical awareness of the power and politics involved in both everyday listening practices and listening as a “scientific” ethnographic method,” the description states. “Centering a black queer ethic of care, the course will bring together key texts from Black feminist musicologists, cultural theorists, and ethnographers in order to help cultivate an ethic for listening as carework. 

“Attending the power dynamics of listening both in the archive and in the field, participation in this course will be grounded in students’ individual objects and sites of study.”

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The class will be taught by Victoria Netanus Xaka, an assistant professor of music whose research interests center around “semiotics,” the study of signs and symbols, as well as “music and sound studies;” “Black studies;” and “Black feminist theory.”

Campus Reform has reached out to Cornell University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.