Summer at Johns Hopkins: Star Trek Music-The Franchise Frontier Online

Are you an academically advanced high school student looking for a fast-paced college-level learning experience and a chance to engage with like-minded peers? Summer at Hopkins offers an unrivaled opportunity to learn from Hopkins’ world-renowned instructors and connect with academically oriented students from around the globe.

Music defines the Star Trek experience. Through their continued reuse and repetition, Star Trek’s many musical themes go beyond their original audiovisual frameworks to operate as learned musical-cultural texts. As Star Trek has expanded its content into a myriad of installments and media platforms, this musical symbolism has proved vital in articulating both these differences and “sameness.”

This online, asynchronous course uses Star Trek’s music as a tool to investigate musical branding and the creation of meaning in the media we consume every day. Through close viewings—and listenings—of film, television episodes, video games, computer games, commercials, and other media, we will explore the meaning(s) these media construct and acquire as they are re-used and re-purposed in audiovisual contexts.

Your work will include studying media clips, television episodes, and some feature-length films; short readings in which we interact with both current and classic scholarly literature; regular discussion posts and responses to our content; a weekly reflection journal of short posts; and a final paper/project on a Star Trek music topic of your choice (1500 words). In so doing, we will hone your analytical skills by learning to critically evaluate filmic media and craft arguments about the roles of music/sound in film.