Foundations of Equity in Music Studies

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What is this course?

The modules collected in this course are meant to provide a preliminary introduction to several foundational concepts relating to equity, in particular those issues most relevant to music research, teaching, and creative practice. (We like to think of this course as Level 0 and Level 1 in a much longer journey towards effective equity practices.) In our discussions about the culture of Music Studies, we wanted to acknowledge that members of our community come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Through this course, we hope to offer a shared language with which our community can discuss issues and experiences surrounding equity and work together to create a more welcoming space for everyone.

This course is not a comprehensive overview of every important topic related to equity and social justice. There are many more issues and perspectives which deserve to be highlighted and further explored. We encourage everyone accessing this resource to continue the lifelong work of learning how to build equitable relationships and spaces, within Music Studies and beyond. We also intend that these modules remain a living document, changing and evolving as new knowledge, expertise, and resources become available. Just like the process of music-making, there will always be something more to learn and integrate into our practice.

Finally, in doing this work together, we learned so much from listening to one another’s stories about our experiences as students, teachers, and as members of equity-seeking communities. In turn, some of our most efficient and effective learning took place in listening to the stories told in many of the resources we share throughout these modules. We encourage everyone to make this form of experience-based learning a central part of their practice in working towards cultures of equity in Music Studies. 

Who is this course for?

This guide is for students, faculty and staff seeking to create equitable spaces in Music Studies. This guide will change over time as we receive feedback from our community. We hope that you will engage with this material and share your feedback on what could be added, or changed within the modules.   

How can this be useful to you?

As you navigate through each module, you will learn that everyone in the community from faculty to students brings unique perspectives to the classroom, including different identities, backgrounds, experiences, traumas, assumptions and biases. Establishing an ongoing equitable environment requires all of us to acknowledge that some of the members of our community  –whether students, teaching assistants, lecturers, faculty, and administrative staff– arrive academically, socially, and economically underprivileged and underserved than others in various settings.

It is reasonable to ask whether equity is possible when our education systems reinforce the very inequalities that some of our community members must overcome. While systemic inequalities require larger bodies of cross-racial and cross-cultural groups to work collaboratively, it is crucial to acknowledge each of us makes this impact possible.  We welcome you to contribute to participate in creating a positive impact in our classrooms and in our research.

How will this benefit our community?

Modules collected in this course will benefit our community by:

1. Offering points of self-reflexive critical thinking in our day-to-day practices in and out of the classroom,
2. Raising awareness on existing and possible equity-related issues in music academia,
3. Helping us collaboratively work on our community’s operational shortcomings in dealing with equity-related issues,
4. Understanding how we can all respond to incidents of racism and discrimination in our community,
5. Encouraging and supporting student-led dialogues and initiatives in the music community.

How to use these modules

For everyone reading these modules:

The ultimate purpose of these modules is to offer a step towards realizing an equitable community in Music Studies – to make it a space where we all feel welcome, safe, supported, and empowered to learn, teach, perform, and create. The work of building such a community is inherently collaborative, ongoing, and involves each and every one of us, including faculty, staff, students, and also visiting artists and scholars. We therefore invite everyone everyone reading these modules to read them as an invitation to community, and, when possible, to reflect, discuss, critique, and expand them in community. The modules are a starting point and community resources that offer: points for discussion; individual and collective critical reflection on positionality, power, privilege, trauma, oppression, and lived experiences; initial ideas and strategies for working towards equity in our work as musicians, educators, and students; an introduction to what steps, strategies, and knowledge systems we might work towards to build a community where we can all thrive.

In engaging with these modules, we need to acknowledge that building this community will take time, and that the modules reflect a first – not final – effort at imagining what equity in Music Studies might look like. We all have a role to play in expanding equity, in considering perspectives and experiences that may have been overlooked. It is our hope that the modules will expand and grow with input and ideas from all of you.

We also acknowledge that Music Studies has not historically been – and for many members of our community from first-year students to tenured faculty, continues not to be – an equitable space. For some of you, reading, discussing, and engaging with these modules might trigger memories of harmful experiences, or grief about the space between the forms of equity we describe and the experiences you have actually had. Please reach out to a trusted friend or mentor or consult our ‘community resources’ section if you need support.

Other members of our community may be thinking through and encountering some of these ideas for the first time. We ask you to consider with curiosity, generosity, and compassion any ideas that might be new to you. Thinking through these ideas empowers working towards opening the doors of our community to those who have not always been let in, and also creates more space for those who got in, but whose lived experiences might make them feel, nevertheless, left out.

When it comes to the work of equity, we are all simultaneously students and teachers. 

Though we offer below some specific suggestions for use for different groups within the Faculty, it is not our goal to reinforce hierarchies, but rather to point to some immediate ways in which these modules might be of service to you:

As a student, we hope these modules serve as resources for individual and peer-based discussion and reflection. If you are from an equity-seeking or under-represented background, we hope the insights and resources these modules bring together might help you feel seen and find community (and if you feel your experiences are not represented, we welcome your feedback and additions). The modules also offer insights into methods and means of creating and experiencing equity in music studies. We hope that being aware of these practices will assist you in advocating for yourself and your peers.

As a teaching assistant (TA), we hope these modules will be of use to you both in your role as a student, but also in your work as an educator. Perhaps more than any other group, TAs stand to benefit from these modules as both students and as teachers. The modules offer insights into best teaching practices and also offer potential starting points for, among other things, tutorial discussions.

As an instructor, we hope these modules will empower and support you in the ongoing work to learn about fostering EDI in the classroom, assist in balancing the complicated emotional and cognitive processes needed to work towards equity, and also offer pedagogical resources for lesson plans, assignments, and teaching resources. We also acknowledge that you, too, might come from equity-seeking and under-represented backgrounds, and hope that the modules might offer community and representation to you as well.  

Acknowledgements 

Foundations of Equity in Music Studies was authored by undergraduate and graduate researchers across areas as part of the Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression Committee's Work Study program, supervised by Dr. Ely Lyonblum. Support for the development of course modules and multimedia comes from the Office of the Vice Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education's EDI Fund. 

Sinem Arslan (PhD Ethnomusicology), Renee Fajardo (MMus Opera), Keturah Gray (PhD Music Education), Roanna Kitchen (MMus Voice Performance), Priscilla Menezes (BMus Music Education), Matias Recharte (PhD Music Education), Camille Rogers (DMA with a Collaborative Specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies), Rena Roussin (PhD Musicology), Anika Venkatesh (BMus Voice Performance)

Special thanks to the following students, faculty members and community members for their invaluable feedback:

Nathaniel Akwetteh, Kristen Graves, Nikitha James, Sadie Menicanin

Prof. Antia Gonzalez Ben (Music Education), Prof. Robin Elliott (Musicology) Dean Ellie Hisama, Prof. Bina John (Music Education), Prof. Midori Koga (Piano Pedagogy), Prof. Gillian MacKay (Conducting, Wind Ensemble), Elizabeth McDonald (Voice Studies), Prof. Nasim Niknafs (Music Education), Prof. Daphne Tan (Music Theory)

Dr. Sebastian Bisciglia (Director, Information & Learning Technology), Dr. Jonathan Clemens (Project Manager, Climate and Culture Review), Prof Alison Gibbs (Director of the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation),

Heather Hines (Office of the Vice-President and Principal), Natasha Smith (Marketing and Publicity)

Tara Kannangara, Xann Schwinn (ChoralHub), Dr. Marguerite Wilson (Binghamton)