Megan Sarno, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music
Professor Megan Sarno’s project enhanced the web presence of student podcasts created in her course Music 121: “Songs of Love, State, and Self.” She created a robust platform through which the students’ podcasts are publicly available online. The students’ podcasts invite reflection on the musical practices, group membership, and sense of identity of people who listen to music, no matter where they are.
As part of Professor Sarno’s course, students were primarily investigating how music functions in culture. They read case studies, analyzed songs for practice, and wrote a few detailed analyses of their own. Course materials introduced them to a variety of types of songs from different moments in the history of Western art music, from medieval troubadour ballads through German salon songs, lullabies, national anthems, and pop songs. The course material was designed to acquaint students with a variety of songs representing many perspectives and experiences beyond their own.
Throughout the course, students were required to connect more fully with individual songs, writing analyses of how the songs are structured, what musical materials are employed, and how the musical elements combine with text to convey a message. To present their findings, students produced podcasts that make their research more readily accessible to a wider audience.
Professor Sarno collaborated with Digital Humanities Assistant Director Austin Mason and Digital Technologist Celeste Sharpe to help smoothly integrate technology into her course and share her students’ work with the public.