In my recent book Reimagining Music Theory: Contexts, Communities, Creativities (Routledge, 2025), I twice invoke queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to consider two important questions in music teaching and learning, both themes of this year’s PGVIS: what kind of work can we be doing to promote diversity and inclusion in rich, non-tokenistic ways, and how do we navigate unfamiliar musical contexts and perspectives in ways that are respectful and meaningful? Sedgwick (1997) advocates a “speculative” and “methodologically adventurous” orientation and invites us to let “discoveries seep in … from the most stretched and ragged edges of one’s competence.” I’m interested in reading this invitation through Dylan Robinson’s (2020) entreaty to be “respectful guests” in any musical context in which one is not a cultural insider. The relation between these is important and, I believe, it is possible to work in a way that is attentive to both.

In this presentation, I will suggest some concrete methods for doing this work in teaching and learning contexts, using the concept of musical hybridity, driven through project-based collaborative work (a third PGVIS theme), as a starting place. I will share some of my own practice-based research—a collaborative artistic project titled “Imaginary Hybridities”—in order to show how such work can inform teaching and learning practice in order to help students think beyond their existing frameworks and perspectives, in order to grow their own creative practices.