bad music and bad books

This pair of dinner seminars will be led by Dr. Dhananjay Jagannathan and Dr. Tara Isabella Burton. It is open to all undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates. RSVP by the individual events below.

Bad books

Wednesday, February 9

It's a truism that books can change your life–but is such a change always for the better? Can books–even beautiful or compelling books–corrupt us? Or should the morality of a book be held apart from its apparent aesthetic value (and can the two even be separated?). This dinner discussion would critically explore both the power and the danger of the novel in particular as a site of both enlightenment and seduction, of influence and vulnerability, ultimately challenging us to ask an even broader question: what is art for?

This dinner seminar will be led by Dr. Tara Isabella Burton.

Bad Music

Wednesday, February 16

Music seems to have extraordinary powers to set our bodies in motion, to shape our feelings, and to affect our thoughts. It is no surprise, then, that censors have worried about the corrosive or corrupting effects of music. Over the past century, most of the worry has centered on popular music, but the troubling popular music of the past (e.g. jazz, rock & roll) has come to be accepted and even celebrated, while newer genres (e.g. metal, rap) are now subject to scrutiny. Is bad music just whatever seems counter-cultural at a given time? Can we uncover alternate criteria for the kind of music that might be corrupting? Or should we oppose attempts at censorship and moral panics over music altogether?

This dinner seminar will be led by Dr. Dhananjay Jagannathan (Columbia).