Explore UCD

UCD Home >

MUS31520

Academic Year 2026/2027

Music at the Edge of Climate: Island Imaginations and Ecologies (MUS31520)

Subject:
Music
College:
Arts & Humanities
School:
Music
Level:
3 (Degree)
Credits:
10
Module Coordinator:
Dr Charissa Granger
Trimester:
Spring
Mode of Delivery:
On Campus
Internship Module:
No
How will I be graded?
Letter grades

Curricular information is subject to change.

This module examines how music, sound, and performance register, interpret, and respond to environmental change in island worlds. Situated in ethnomusicology and informed by ecomusicology, island studies, and environmental humanities, the course explores music not simply as a reflection of climate crisis but as a vital social and cultural practice through which communities make meaning, sustain relations, remember ecological histories, and imagine liveable futures. Focusing especially on island and archipelagic contexts, the course asks how rising seas, storms, extraction, ecological loss, and environmental precarity reshape musical life, and how musicking in turn becomes a way of sensing, narrating, and surviving those transformations.
Through case studies drawn from the Caribbean, Ireland, and other island sites, students will examine the relationship between musical performance and ecology, paying attention to soundscapes, festivals, ritual, migration, tourism, sustainability, resilience, orange, green, and blue economies, reparation, and the uneven distribution of environmental vulnerability. The course introduces students to key concepts such as the Anthropocene, Plantationocene, political ecology, environmental justice, and archipelagic thought, but approaches them through musical and ethnographic questions: How do island communities sound climate change? How do genres, instruments, repertoires, and performance spaces carry ecological memory? In what ways do music and listening produce forms of care, critique, human praxis, and world-making under conditions of climate instability?
Emphasising music as cultural practice, embodied knowledge, and social relation, the course engages ethnomusicological methods of listening, analysis, and interpretation alongside critical work on climate and coloniality. Students will consider how music participates in struggles over land, sea, labor, heritage, and belonging, and how island musics offer distinctive ways of thinking about environment, vulnerability, and futurity at the edge of climate.

About this Module

Learning Outcomes:

This course aims to introduce upper-level undergraduate students to key questions, concepts, and debates concerning music, sound, performance, and environmental change in island contexts.
It also aims to develop students’ understanding of how ethnomusicology can engage climate change, ecological vulnerability, political ecology, and colonial histories through the study of musical practices, sonic environments, and performance traditions.
A further aim is to equip students to analyse music as a form of ecological knowledge, cultural memory, and social practice, and to apply these perspectives to advanced research, critical discussion, and public-facing scholarly or creative work.
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Describe key concepts, debates, and theoretical approaches in ethnomusicology, ecomusicology, island studies, and environmental humanities relevant to the study of music and climate.
• Explain how environmental, historical, and political processes such as climate change, extraction, migration, tourism, and coloniality shape island ecologies and musical life.
• Analyse musical, sonic, and ethnographic case studies in relation to ecology, soundscape, cultural memory, performance, and social life.
• Evaluate the usefulness and limits of key concepts such as the Anthropocene, Plantationocene, political ecology, environmental justice, and archipelagic thought for music-based research.
• Develop a written, oral, audiovisual, or practice-based intervention that applies ethnomusicological approaches to a specific issue concerning music, climate, and island ecologies.

UNESCO highlights a set of key competencies that support individuals in their development and support society in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UCD has adapted these competencies and is combining them with others to form a general framework of learning competencies. This module will help you develop the competencies below to the levels specified. 
Learning Competency Additional Information Level

Collaboration

 The ability to learn from others; to understand and respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others (empathy); to understand, relate to and be sensitive to others (empathic leadership); to deal with conflicts in a group; and to facilitate collaborative and participatory problem solving. Advanced Beginner

Critical Thinking

 The ability to question norms, practices and opinions; to reflect on one’s own values, perceptions and actions. Proficient

Systems Thinking

 The ability to recognize and understand relationships; to analyse complex systems; to think of how systems are embedded within different domains and different scales; and to deal with uncertainty. Competent

Strategic

 The ability to collectively develop and implement innovative actions that further sustainability at the local level and further afield. Not addressed

Integrated Problem Solving

 The overarching ability to apply different problem-solving frameworks to complex sustainability problems and develop viable, inclusive and equitable solution options that promote sustainable development, integrating the competencies in this list. Competent

Self-awareness

 The ability to reflect on one’s own role in the local community and (global) society; to continually evaluate and further motivate one’s actions; and to deal with one’s feelings and desires. Competent

Normative

 The ability to understand and reflect on the norms and values that underlie one’s actions; and to negotiate values, principles, goals, and targets, in a context of conflicts of interest and trade-offs, uncertain knowledge and contradictions. Competent

Anticipatory

 The ability to understand and evaluate multiple scenarios for the future – possible, probable and desirable; to create one’s own visions for the future; to apply the precautionary principle; to assess the consequences of actions; and to deal with risks and changes. Advanced Beginner

Digital Literacy and Judgement

 The ability to access, evaluate, create and communicate information in digital environments; to engage critically, ethically and responsibly with digital technologies and digital information; to understand their opportunities, limitations, risks and impact on individual’s digital identities; and to exercise informed judgement in digital participation and decision-making. Competent

AI Literacy & Agency

 The ability to understand, critically evaluate and responsibly engage with artificial intelligence; to recognise how AI systems are shaped by human values; to assess their ethical, social and environmental implications; and to exercise human judgement, agency and accountability in AI-related contexts. Competent

Wellbeing

 Wellbeing is having the resources and skills to meet life's challenges, including attributes such as personal development skills, resilience, stress management, strengths, lifestyle skills, nutrition, physical activity, sleep, alcohol/substance use, academic skills, time management, goal setting, interpersonal skills, group work, communication. Competent

The United Nations identified seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as core to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and UCD contributes in general to SDG 4 Quality Education. Further SDGs explored within this module if relevant are listed below. A scale of 1 - 5 indicates the extent to which the SDG is covered.


Goal Name Description Coverage

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable 1

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns 1

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts 1
 

Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Specified Learning Activities

44
Autonomous Student Learning

120
Lectures

24
Tutorial

12
Total

200

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Teaching and learning will combine lectures, practical tutorials, guided listening sessions, case-study analysis, and student-led discussion to introduce key concepts in ethnomusicology, ecomusicology, island studies, and environmental humanities. Students will engage with music, sound recordings, audiovisual materials, fieldwork examples, and scholarly texts in order to develop critical listening, analytical interpretation, and theoretical understanding. Group discussions and short presentations, will encourage students to work through ideas collaboratively, connect course concepts to specific island and archipelagic contexts, and reflect on the relationship between music, climate, ecology, and coloniality. Peer review and workshop-style activities will support the development of students’ research questions, fieldwork reflections, and final written, oral, audiovisual, or practice-based projects.

Students may use AI only for limited support in assessment planning and technical review. This includes interpreting the assessment prompt, brainstorming initial ideas, scoping possible research directions, outlining, checking spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and aligning a bibliography or Works Cited with a required citation style. AI must not be used to generate, rewrite, or refine the substantive content, argument, analysis, fieldwork interpretation, or critical discussion of the assessment; the main intellectual work must be authored by the student. Any use of AI must be acknowledged in a brief AI Use Statement included at the end of the assessment, specifying what tool was used, for what purpose, and exactly where in the assignment it was used, for example: “AI was used to check grammar in the introduction” or “AI was used to format the Works Cited page in MLA style.” Students are responsible for checking the accuracy of any AI-assisted output and remain fully accountable for the final submitted work.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade Component repeat (in-module) Offered
Assignment(Including Essay): Short Critical Concept Paper Week 4 Graded No
15
 No
Assignment(Including Essay): Interview or Fieldwork Listening Assignment Week 8 Graded No
15
 No
Portfolio: Research Questions and Themes Porfolio Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12 Graded No
30
 No
Assignment(Including Essay): Final Research or Creative Intervention Week 15 Graded No
40
 No

As part of UCD's student support, under the Additional Consideration policy, extensions may be available for the following assessments in the module: Assignment (including essay/poster), Portfolio, Reflective Assignment, Report(s), and Individual Project.


Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 

Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Self-assessment activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students will receive written feedback on each assessment, with comments addressing conceptual clarity, use of course literature, methodological development, analytical depth, structure, and presentation. The assessments are designed to build cumulatively: the short concept paper develops theoretical vocabulary, the fieldwork/interview write-up develops ethnomusicological method, and the research questions and themes portfolio prepares the foundation for the final project. Feedback on the first two assignments will therefore guide students in refining their use of key concepts, strengthening their analytical writing, and developing appropriate methods for music-based climate research. Feedback on the portfolio will be especially formative, helping students sharpen their research questions, identify relevant literature, clarify their case study, and decide whether the final submission will take the form of a podcast, short film, or practice-based project. The final assessment will draw together the skills developed across the course and will be evaluated as a sustained scholarly or creative intervention into the relationship between music, climate, and island ecologies.

Allen, Aaron S. “Ecomusicology: Ecocriticism and Musicology.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 64, no. 2, 2011, pp. 391–394.
Allen, Aaron S., and Kevin Dawe, editors. Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature. Routledge, 2015.
Bonilla, Yarimar. “The Coloniality of Disaster: Race, Empire, and the Temporal Logics of Emergency in Puerto Rico, USA.” Political Geography, vol. 78, 2020, article 102181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102181.
Bonilla, Yarimar, and Marisol LeBrón, editors. Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. Haymarket Books, 2019.
Césaire, Aimé. “Poetry and Knowledge.” Translated by A. James Arnold, Sulfur, no. 5, 1982, pp. 17–32.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. Allegories of the Anthropocene. Duke UP, 2019.
Ferdinand, Malcom. Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World. Translated by Anthony Paul Smith, Polity, 2022.
Ingold, Tim. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Routledge, 2011.
Kavanagh, Aoife. “Studying the Musical Ecology of Place in Irish Towns through Deep Mapping.” NPPSH Reflections, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 22–32.
Klein, Naomi. The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. Haymarket Books, 2018.
Sheller, Mimi. Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Duke UP, 2020.
Titon, Jeff Todd. “Economy, Ecology, and Music: An Introduction.” The World of Music, vol. 51, no. 1, 2009, pp. 5–15.
Titon, Jeff Todd. “Music and Sustainability: An Ecological Viewpoint.” The World of Music, vol. 51, no. 1, 2009, pp. 119–137.
Vergès, Françoise. “Racial Capitalocene.” Futures of Black Radicalism, edited by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin, Verso, 2017, pp. 72–82.
Whyte, Kyle Powys. “Indigenous Science (Fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral Dystopias and Fantasies of Climate Change Crises.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, vol. 1, nos. 1–2, 2018, pp. 224–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621.
Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
Spring Lecture Offering 1 Week(s) - 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Thurs 14:00 - 15:50
Spring Lecture Offering 1 Week(s) - 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Tues 10:00 - 10:50
Print this page
Fill in the following details:
Enter the body of your query here.

From time to time UCD would like to send you further information that we feel, based on your enquiry, would be of interest to you.