Citizen 410, or “Whose America?” is a symposium (capstone) level course offered at Longwood University. This course explored the American Voice in great detail through popular music. Some of the artists we covered were Elvis Presley, Big Mama Thornton, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, and many more. Overall, the course surrounded whose voice can sum up American culture in music and why that person or group is given that much power.

My artifact for this course is a link to my end-of-term presentation on the hypersexualization of women in the music industry, conducted with four of my peers. As a note, this video does have sexually explicit content from the music videos of the discussed artists, and as such, viewer discretion is highly advised.

This class was endlessly enlightening to me. I have always been an avid music lover, and I took this class based on that interest. I found it similar to the Music 325 class I took earlier in my college education, as it displayed just how fundamental music is to present-day society, just as it was during the Vietnam War. My experience in this class can easily be applied to social work practice, as the clues I learned in this course about whose voice is amplified and those who are downtrodden can provide insights for advocacy and implementation of social justice.