Julia Fennell ’21
When Dr. Lidia Chang, Assistant Professor of Music, was designing her first solo class at CC, she wanted to find a new way to teach the Classical Era in Western music. While most colleges teach the usual parade of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, she wanted to do something different; something that would stick with her students far beyond the block. To do this, Chang turned her classroom into a Jane Austen novel, where the class studied the same period in England, but through the lens of Austen.
“What emerges from this approach is a real understanding of the social and cultural values of that time and place, which contributed to the aesthetic and musical values of the period,” says Chang. “Since the U.S. was born out of English colonies, over the course of the block we kept encountering echoes of Georgian England’s cultural values in our own society today.”
“As a scholar and musician, I’m really interested in invisible histories—much of my work is in collecting and arranging the minutiae of the past to reveal historical narratives that might otherwise have never seen the light of day.”
Dr. Lidia Chang
Chang believes it’s important for her students to see the bigger picture, beyond just a period of time or a particular discipline. “As a scholar and musician, I’m really interested in invisible histories—much of my work is in collecting and arranging the minutiae of the past to reveal historical narratives that might otherwise have never seen the light of day,” she says. “In this class I really hoped to teach students about the power and nuance of historiography—the writing of history—and how it determines whose stories get told and whose don’t. Why is it that all the ‘Great Composers’ of the Western canon were German? Is it because the German people produced the most talented composers? Of course not! But the scholars who wrote the first histories of Western music had a particular cultural agenda and so now our concert halls and music departments are full of their music.”
Chang, who wrote her thesis on musical praxis in Austen’s novels, encouraged students to immerse themselves in Austen’s work. During a planned wellness-day-off from class, she urged her students to ask themselves what one of Austen’s characters might do on a Friday, like drawing, making music for fun, going on a walk, or writing something by hand.
“I was thinking a lot about embodied experiences when I designed this class—like, how can I get the students to experience things that people in the Georgian era would have also experienced? I am a professional flutist and historical performance is a crucial part of my scholarship because I feel like it really lets me ‘be in the room,’ so to speak, with the people I study from the 18th-19th centuries,” says Chang.
Students in Chang’s course, Topics in Music: Music and Gender in Jane Austen’s England,analyzed gender performativity during the Georgian Era by studying primary and secondary sources about music and repertoire during that period. They read novels by Austen, listened to music created during that time, and learned dances that a character in one of Austen’s novels might perform.
Chang prioritized hands-on learning for her students throughout this block, which allowed them to attend concerts, participate in music and dancing, and go on field trips. Chang also worked to introduce her students to different opportunities and experiences on campus that they can continue to engage with throughout their time at CC. During the first week of class, students attended the Escher String Quartet in Packard Hall, where they heard pieces by German composer Felix Mendelssohn, Czech composer Leoš Janáček, and Austrian composer Franz Schubert.
“The music in the Escher quartet performance was amazing and very entertaining,” says Shianne Freeman ’25, a Biochemistry major. “They had three pieces that were very different from each other, and the variety kept it interesting. It was interesting to attend the convergence before the performance to learn a bit about the group and the context and history of the pieces that they played.”
Students also attended an open house at the Seay Library of Music and Art, giving students a chance to tour the music library and recording studio, as well as the opportunity to meet other Music Department students, faculty, and staff.
During third week, students performed “Glorious Apollo” by Samuel Webbe, which was written in 1787. Later that week, Chang (flute) performed a trio with Susan Grace (piano), CC Senior Lecturer, Artist-in-Residence, and Associate Chair of the Music Department, and Jenna Hunt (harp), CC’s Music Events Coordinator and Academic Administrative Assistant.
“It was amazing hearing the live performance,” says Zoe Trockman ’25, a Music major. “I’ve never heard a harp play with other instruments before and it was really cool to hear all of the instruments weave together. I always love watching musicians play live music because I feel like I can see their love for it through their performance.”
“Performing these dances as a class made us all feel more connected and really helped me connect to the content of the class.”
Shianne Freeman ’25
Chang spent time ensuring her students were prepared for each experience of the block. She even taught her students about Regency dances and music so that they could perform the dances with the musicians during performances.
“We spent an entire day learning two Regency dances, including the ‘Indian Queen’,” says Freeman. “These are dances done in lines with partners and groups of four or six and are a lot of fun! We danced in class first and then danced on stage together to live music.”
The embodied experiences throughout the block not only furthered their learning, but helped students connect to each other.
“Performing these dances as a class made us all feel more connected and really helped me connect to the content of the class,” Freeman says. “We focused a lot on how men and women of the regency period performed their masculinity and femininity through these dances. We also learned about how important dancing was for unmarried men and women to interact, flirt, and have fun!”
As part of the class, students virtually attended some segments of the Jane Austen Society of North America Annual General Meeting, Pride and Prejudice: A Rocky Romance. This year’s meeting focused on Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and attendees of the meeting participated in presentations, debates, and discussions about the novel.
A highlight of the class was attending the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Regency Ball. Students attended the ball in full regency attire and got to experience a ball the same way a character in Jane Austen’s novel might.
“Learning and participating in the dance that people in this era actually partook in helped me feel really engaged with the concepts we had been learning in this class,” says Grace Mun ’25, a Computer Science major and Music minor.
“The students were all so creative with their Regency costumes—finding things in their closets, thrifting, sewing,” says Chang. “And since we had practiced the dances ahead of time, they were familiar with the music and most of the dance steps so they fit right in with the JASNA members who have been attending these balls for years. I hope it brought to life the dancing scenes that we read in Emma, and made tangible some of the dynamics of 18th-century gender performance that we learned about in class.” Chang is new to Colorado Springs but is starting to get involved in the Pike’s Peak Region of JASNA, where she is working to get some dances on the calendar in the near future.
Most nights, students were assigned readings from Emma by Austen, and were asked to listen to pieces of music that were referenced in a novel or important in Austen’s life. Students would then discuss the reading and music the next day in class.
“One of my favorite things about this class was how we could connect gender performance expectations with how music was performed during this era. There was a big fear of ‘effeminacy’ that was emerging near the end of the 1700s which put many new expectations on men and women for how to perform their gender.”
Grace Mun ’25
Freeman’s favorite part of the block was discussing how gender was performed in Regency England. “We read some conduct literature in class, which was literature released in this time that instructed men and women on how they should behave in society and warned against the threats to masculinity that they saw at the time,” Freeman says. “A lot of this literature had absurd ideas about manliness, threats from the Italian opera, and homophobia. This performance of gender is also related to how men and women of different social classes were allowed to interact with music. It’s been fascinating to me to compare these gender roles and restrictions of this time-period to those of today. A lot of the ideas are sadly very similar.”
“One of my favorite things about this class was how we could connect gender performance expectations with how music was performed during this era,” says Mun, who added that Chang instructed students to imagine themselves as people living in the late 18th century. “There was a big fear of ‘effeminacy’ that was emerging near the end of the 1700s which put many new expectations on men and women for how to perform their gender. One example of this was that men weren’t allowed to indulge in music ‘too much’ or else they would be seen as a more feminine person, which would be socially looked down upon.”
Students were also required to take notes and answer prompts using a notebook rather than a laptop, as this was a screen-free class.
“Putting pen to paper was a common activity in the Georgian era: composing letters, writing in one’s journal, sharing recipes, making shopping lists, transcribing or composing music, and so many other acts of committing information to paper,” Chang says. “Students may not do much of this sort of writing in their daily lives, so I hope that they saw this aspect of the class as an opportunity to exercise the skill of putting pen to paper and (re)discovering the tactile sensations and creative possibilities that analog writing tools provide.”
“I ordered a few feather quill pens and a pot of ink and actually had the students take turns using them in class to take notes, which they were waymore enthusiastic about than I had expected,” Chang says. “Next time I offer this class, I’m going to order enough so that everyone can have their own. I’d also love to do a day in the Art department where they learn how to actually make quill pens from real feathers, and possibly also how to make ink.”
All the embodied experiences in this class were valuable, but Chang was most proud of the Regency dancing, the Glee singing experience, the pen-to-paper requirement, and all the live performances she, Grace, and Hunt brought into the classroom.
“These were all musical experiences that Jane Austen and her characters would have known and understood so I’m really glad I had the opportunity to bring them to life for my students,” says Chang.