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Course embeds ‘ideological narratives within the curriculum,’ music expert says 

Taking inspiration from a “recent Reddit thread,” The New School is offering a course in fall 2025 to explore the question “Why Do Trans Women Make Awesome Music?”

“This course posits that part of what makes trans women’s music ‘awesome’ are the lyrics and sounds of their political demands in transmisogynistic cultures determined to silence them,” the course description states.

Students are required to create their “own transfeminist album of original music inspired by the political aspirations and demands in the music [they] hear throughout the semester,” it states.

Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts students at the private New York university will listen to modern transgender musicians and discuss how they have “used music to amplify transfeminist politics as a soundscape that transmisogyny cannot drown out,” the description states. 

The school’s website does not yet list an assigned instructor.

In response to the course description, Make Music Right President Chloe Castillo told The College Fix via email the course advances a clear ideological agenda. Castillo’s group “educates Americans on music’s role in shaping perspectives,” according to its website.

Castillo told The Fix, “Universities should serve as bastions of intellectual rigor and open inquiry, fostering critical thinking and the pursuit of truth, rather than functioning as conduits for ideological indoctrination or the promotion of prescriptive social agendas.”

Make Music Right understands music as having a “unique ability to influence society across generations.” Castillo said, “It is evident that The New School recognizes this potent influence and is strategically leveraging it to advance a distinct agenda, embedding ideological narratives within the curriculum to shape students’ perspectives.”

Castillo also told The Fix, “Teaching students to accept these radical ideologies as ‘normal’ through curriculum such as The New School’s Trans Women Music course is certain to assist in an overall broader shift toward progressive values that challenge traditional norms.”

Americans have grown accustomed to the overt incorporation of ideological agendas in popular music, often overlooking the subtle yet pervasive ways these narratives shape cultural attitudes and values, she said. 

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Among the topics discussed in the course, students will also study “trans musicians” and groups such as Ms. Boogie, Transcendence Gospel Choir, Arca, Susy Shock, SOPHIE, Ah-Mer-Ah-Sue, Anohni, and more.

The Transcendence Gospel Choir, affiliated with the City of Refuge United Church of Christ, was founded in 2001 as the first documented transgender gospel choir.

The choir focuses “on promoting transgender ideology within a sacred space,” which “undermines biblical teachings on gender and identity,” Castillo said.

“By prioritizing identity politics over theological fidelity, it dilutes the sacred purpose of gospel music and contributes to a cultural shift that erodes traditional values, fostering division in the church and in proper society,” she said.

The Fix reached out to the The Eugene Lang College as well as The New School media relations office multiple times over the last few weeks for comment on the course’s subject matter. Neither responded.

The Eugene Lang College also offers a Gender Studies program, which “question[s] the culturally constructed idea of sex difference and the way gender and sexuality are renegotiated over time.”

Another course the program will offer this fall is called “A Queer American Past: Topics in LGBTQ History.”

The course description states that queer history “is intertwined with structures of power usually studied as ‘American history.'”

Students “will often scrutinize well known events, institutions, people, and public spaces for what they reveal about both ‘heteronormative’ and ‘queer’ sexualities; cisgender and genderqueer selves,” it states. 

Another nearby school, New York University is offering a class on transgender and queer “approaches to domesticity” next semester, The College Fix reported.

The course description poses the question, “Is home always cis and straight?” Students will read a book titled “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel, featuring a lesbian woman and her gay father.

MORE: ASU’s ‘Queer Visual Resource Center’ features sexually explicit art

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Course description page for ‘Why Do Trans Women Make Awesome Music?’ course; The New School/Youtube

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