Exploring the intersections of music, culture and nature, this course offers participants a site to connect musical practices to current environmental contexts, politics and practices. We begin with the premise that music is a human universal; a crucial component of every healthy society. We are all musical beings, and use music to describe and define the spaces we occupy; therefore, music serves as a meaningful form of environmental design. This course shifts music from the margins to the center of our conversations about climate crisis. At a time of planetary peril, we convene a critically-, socially- and scientifically-engaged inquiry into the ways in which music makes a better world. Readings and case studies will explore themes from musicology (e.g. soundscape studies, acoustic ecology, and animal musicality), critical geography and sociology, placing them in the context of historical, traditional and contemporary musical performance and musical activism. Sessions may include music from a broad range of social locations: R. Murray Schafer, John Cage, Tanya Tagaq, and the Esso Trinidad Steel Band; field recordings, soundwalks, and animal song; and musical responses to environmental crises in New Orleans, Fukushima, and Alberta’s “tar sands.” Assignments may include: assessing the environmental cost of musical actions (concert-going, touring, streaming); re-designing the physical environment of music-making; and media projects that animate alternative narratives about music and climate change. **Students must register for both the lecture and discussion section of this course.** NOTE: Lecture will be delivered online at the time listed in this catalog entry. All discussion sections are scheduled for in-person instruction on campus. [This ULEC is in category 1, Tools for Social Change.]