Academic
RESEARCH
PHD Dissertation:
COLONIZATION AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF HIERARCHIES OF THE HUMAN THROUGH MUSIC EDUCATION: STUDIES IN THE EDUCATION OF FEELING
In this study I explore the role of musical practices in the making of different sensibilities. Beginning with the founding of colonial musical institutions in the late nineteenth century in Canada and ending with a consideration of the ideals and subjectivities embodied in a 2008 concert at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, I take up the "education of feeling" as it is rehearsed into being through various musical practices and juxtapose notions of identity with actual material and social relations. The dissertation is a Foucaultian genealogy of music education in Canada with "music education" referring to three distinct areas of public life: public school music education; the institutional settings in which professional musicians and music educators are taught; and public celebrations of national identity in which music is deployed in order to enjoin participants in emotional responses to particular historical/ political narratives.
My concern is to track the production of Imperial subjects and the normalization of hierarchies of the human, for example, rationalities of race, gender and class, as they become embodied and normalized in colonial institutional structures and discourses of national identity. I am particularly concerned with the ways that the displacement of Indigenous peoples, along with narratives of white entitlement, are rationalized and rehearsed into being in musical contexts. I also take up the question of how the discipline of musical training might lead to increased identification of classically- and university-trained musicians with the ruling order, and passivity in "political terms of obedience"- a subjectivity Foucault refers to as "docile bodies." Coining the expression "terminal naivety," I draw attention to places where political naivety is produced through common-place attitudes and practices in contemporary sites of music education and highlight personal and societal effects, and potential costs, that result from positioning ourselves and our artistic endeavours as politically disinterested.
Masters Thesis:
Vaugeois, Lise. 2004. Where politics and music meet: Why developing critical consciousness is important to the education of professional musicians. MEd Thesis, Faculty of Education, Lakehead University.
The thesis explores intersections of music and politics and argues that these issues are not adequately addressed in professional music education as it is currently conceived. The thesis is a conceptual study that draws on the literatures of philosophy of music education, critical theory and critical pedagogy, in particular, the work of Paulo Freire.
Advisor: Dr. Maureen Ford, Theory and Policy Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
EDUCATION
DEGREE STUDIES
PhD in Philosophy of Music Education, 2013
Faculty of Music, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Masters of Education in Curriculum, 2004
Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario
Post-Graduate Certificate, 1997
Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, England
Program: Performance & Communication Skills: i.e. composition, improvisation and developing school and community music programs.
Honours Bachelor of Music in Performance (French Horn), 1981
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario