As the title suggests, my game freezes and crashes every time I try to go to the Magic section of the menu. I've had no other problems with Skyrim so far, so this is understandably very disappointing as it means my very mage-oriented character has essentially become unplayable

I've posted the exact same thing. I've just slain the first dragon around Whiterun and can't get to my shouts. Though as I type its just started working :/ Just left it for 10 mins and the Dovahkin Shout-like sound shook the screen and its working... very odd...

Try wiping clean your cache from your dashboard, which is wiping the cache off of your hard drive, and/or storage device. That could fix it. It's a thought.

I left my Xbox sit for a half hour and then reloaded a previous save. I can access the menu again, though I'm not taking any chances and I've left it alone for the night.

This happens to me as well. I thought it was a save issue, but I went back through plenty of saves and it is still happening. Quite frustrating since I need to use my spells as a mage.

Other things I have tried:

uninstalling the game on 360 and re-installing
uninstalling and playing from the disk
etc,,,

Its a hard crash too... kills all music, etc... So basically I'm screwed until someone posts a workaround.