The SMT Pedagogy Interest Group and the AMS Pedagogy Study Group welcome proposals for a joint evening session at the SMT-AMS Meeting in Minneapolis, Nov. 5-8, 2020 on the topic of “Pedagogy for the People: Using Social Media Strategies to Create Understanding and Engagement.”
More and more, music theorists and musicologists are realizing the power of social media (podcasts, Twitter, YouTube) as an educational tool. There are many YouTube content creators who are doing incredible work of explaining complex ideas in ways that students and even non-specialists can understand. In music history, Linda Shaver-Gleason’s “Not Another Music History Cliché!” blog was well-received by specialists and non-specialists alike. In memory of her untimely passing, our session will focus on the pedagogy of outreach, bringing together a panel of content creators and public scholars in both disciplines. We seek to inspire music pedagogues to investigate how we can make musicology/theory more accessible, both to college students and to the public. Approaches to this topic might include best practices for the use of public musicology/theory in the classroom (either as reading assignments or homework assignments); what we can learn from the best public musicology/theory as scholars; critical engagement with public musicology/theory; metrics for assessing the impact of public musicology/theory; what musicologists and theorists can learn from other fields that have a long record of engaging with the public (museum studies or public history for example), and how to avoid unintended or harmful ramifications, such as trolling or bullying.
The session will be a panel discussion incorporating 10-minute presentations by each panelist, followed by discussion among the panel and with the audience. We would also welcome ideas for using session time to inspire new resources in “public” music pedagogy.
Please send a proposal of no more than 250 words describing your interest in the topic and what you plan to present to Matt Baumer (mbaumer@iup.edu) by midnight PST on Sunday, March 15, 2020. Proposals from more than one person, such as a theorist-musicologist team, are welcome. Selected participants will be notified by April 15, 2020.