These undergraduate syllabi are the winners of the SMT's Diversity Course Design award and together serve as a model for other instructors of music theory in implementing an inclusive music theory curriculum.
About the award
Diversity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice are important goals of the Society for Music Theory. These goals cannot simply be proclaimed; we must all work toward them. There is no better starting point than in our undergraduate classrooms. It is for this reason that the SMT introduces the Award for Diversity Course Design.
This annual award will honor an outstanding undergraduate syllabus that promotes diversity in music theory. The award underscores our commitment to these goals in practical ways: the winning entry (as well as any honorable mentions chosen by the committee) will be posted on the SMT website to serve as a model. Over the years, a range of best practices will emerge that can change what we teach and how we teach it.
This syllabus cannot exist without the invaluable guidance I have luckily received at the Eastman School of Music from my various pedagogical mentors, to whom I am immensely grateful. I acknowledge them in the chronological order I worked with them: Elizabeth Marvin, William Marvin, Benjamin Baker, Nathan Lam, Sarah Marlowe, Zachary Bernstein, and Matthew Curlee. I also owe this syllabus to my students at Eastman and in private, from whom I learned as much as I have taught them. I further thank my wonderful peer TAs at Eastman, who are effective and creative teaching models. Most importantly, I am grateful to my grandfather, Minglie Hu, an acclaimed teacher of mathematics who has always been and will always be an inspiration for dedicated, respectful, and skillful pedagogy. This syllabus is dedicated to the loving memory of Sze Kwok-Wang and Yan Hong, two dear teachers in my life who passed away in 2024.
I would like to thank Amy Bauer for sharing course materials from her graduate seminar and Indonesian and Hindustani theory course, many of which I incorporated into my Music Theories of the World course. I would also like to thank Ian Quinn for inspiration and conversations about the course while the idea was in its earliest stages.
The contents and structure of this syllabus are deeply inspired by what I learned from Alexandra du Bois and Garo Saraydarian during our curricular work together at the Longy School of Music. I wish to thank them both for enriching my view of how music theory can serve its students and the broader community.
We wish to acknowledge Nicole Biamonte and David Brackett for the help during our design of this course, and all the artists, communities, writers, and other voices who have contributed to hip hop's vitality and longevity as a driving cultural force.
I would like to thank all of the TAs who worked with me on Music 128 up to the year this prize was awarded for their ideas, materials, and suggestions. These include Maisie Sum, Juan Diego Diaz, Kirk King, Jonathan Adams, and especially Julia Ulehla, who contributed greatly to the prize-winning version. Among many mentors I would like especially like to thank Simha Arom for his discourse on unlearning which was so formative to the course concept
