Love Songs: The Art and Politics of Feeling in Music

In this course, we explore the long, rich history of love in song, examining how music gives shape to one of the most elusive and powerful human emotions. From medieval troubadour poetry to torch songs, soul ballads, operatic arias, indie heartbreak anthems, and contemporary pop, we trace how different eras, cultures, and genres have imagined love through sound and lyrics. Alongside close listening and lyrical analysis, we engage with philosophical and critical texts on love, desire, voice, and the aesthetics of emotion. Topics may include unrequited love, queer desire, protest and pleasure, heartbreak as performance, and the tension between authenticity and artifice. This course will be recorded. Students will have access to the video for 30 days.