This seminar focuses on developing skills required for academic learning and research. We will read different kinds of texts that address issues surrounding histories and presents of inequality and emancipatory social movements as manifested through music/art/culture. Whilst doing that, we also consider how
to access texts beyond their content (e.g. structure, voice, tone, context, argument building, hypotheses, synthesis etc.). In this way, the seminar will offer guidance in close reading, note-taking, critical reflection and analysis of interdisciplinary academic texts. Along the way, we will also develop tools for academic writing. Our discussions will address: how and why texts are structured a certain way, identify and summarise key arguments, observe different writing styles among other aspects. By the end of the seminar, students will acquire skills to read arduous texts as well as write academic term papers and essays.