Nita Karpf Turns Traditional Musicology Upside Down for Oberlin Students Photographs and text by Sue Kropp
Related Links: Juanita Karpf's faculty page		NOVEMBER 12, 2001--For Juanita Karpf, music, gender, and sexuality are not mutually exclusive ideas. Karpf, a visiting assistant professor of women's studies, has made a career for herself by finding the connections between these and other themes in traditional and popular musical genres. Karpf spent her undergraduate years at the Crane School of Music and pursued her doctorate in music history and performance at the University of Georgia. She originally trained as a cellist. "I finally realized that I didn't like performing in front of people as much as I liked studying feminist theory, giving papers, and teaching," she says. During her first semester at Oberlin, Karpf is teaching Music, Gender and Sexuality (WOST-105-01), a colloquium for first-year students. The course focuses on four landmark texts and examines the issues of gender and sexuality in the study of traditional musicology. "Popular culture has never been afraid to look at these issues within music, especially with the advent of MTV," says Karpf. "However, traditional music classes tend to avoid these issues completely or downplay the issues' significance within the field of traditional music." Karpf's approach to teaching the first-year colloquium encourages students to read and write critically. The course also will give them confidence in presenting well-formulated ideas in front of their peers, as an end-of-semester project heavily influences their grade. "My goal is to have students come out of my class confident in the skills they've acquired," Karpf says. Karpf will teach one course next semester. The 200-level class, Feminisms and Music, will be open to all students. Unlike Karpf's colloquium, this course will focus on feminist theories and how the ideas they present can help musicologists analyze specific genres of music. Although Karpf's ideas may seem controversial to some, she believes that a close examination of music history offers another way to listen to and appreciate music. "I hope my students never hear music the same way again," Karpf says. "Traditional music is not boring--it can be racy and sexy and fun, and can help us understand how society's stereotypes get played out through music as an art form."
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