Congratulations to Musicology faculty member, Michael Silvers, who was officially promoted to Associate Professor with Indefinite Tenure!
His book, Voices of Drought: The Politics of Music and Environment in Northeastern Brazil, is out this year from the University of Illinois Press and available HERE
Makoto Harris Takao is a musicologist, early modern historian, and player of the viol who works on Japan’s relationship with Christianity from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Carlos Roberto Ramírez is a musicologist and harpsichordist whose primary research area is the study of Early Modern music and culture, focusing on the convergence of musical practice, organology, the history of the book, and subjectivity from 1350 to 1750.
Read more here: https://music.illinois.edu/news/two-scholar-performers-bring-global-perspectives-musicology-faculty
Congratulations to Dr. Christina Bashford, who became a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK in 2018!
The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868, and is the premier society of professional historians in Britain; its fellowships are awarded to those who are deemed to have made an original contribution to historical scholarship.
Congratulations to Matthew Knight, winner of the 2018 JaFran Jones Award at the Midwest Chapter Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology for his paper, “Song as Intangible Cultural Commodity: Neoliberal Governmentality meets Ancient Hospitality in the Georgian Highlands.”
The JaFran Jones prize is awarded annually (whenever funds allow) to the best student paper presented at the Chapter meeting. The prize was established in 1998 to honor the memory of the composer, ethnomusicologist and Balinese gamelan teacher JaFran Jones (d. 1997) who taught at the University of Toledo and at Bowling Green State University.
Read more about the award and the Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology here: https://midsem.wordpress.com/jafran-jones-award/
You are cordially invited to the reveal of the Music & Performing Arts Library’s renovated player piano during a lecture-demonstration to be held on the afternoon of 9/22/18. More details about the exact time and place(s) are forthcoming—but the demonstration will be at MPAL and the lecture will be in another location in the Music Building TBD. A modest reception will follow.
Musicology doctoral candidate Hilary Brady Morris has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct 10 months of dissertation research in Nepal on the Himalayan lute.
Her ethnographic study focuses on the intersections of music and belonging through investigating Himalayan lutes in the ethnically diverse neighborhood of Boudhanath, Kathmandu.
While abroad, Morris will also provide English-language tutoring and translation in local schools and monasteries. She also seeks to volunteer with local organizations and facilitate cultural exchange through community outreach. Her long-term goals include an academic career in ethnomusicology and Himalayan studies, directing a music ensemble partnering with Himalayan guest artists and cultivating a student-exchange program.
https://music.illinois.edu/news/hilary-morris-fulbright-nepal#.W3rnqyBUyQw.facebook
Check out this radio story on Australia’s ABC Radio National on the song “Strange Fruit” and Gabriel Solis’s research on the impact of African American music on Australia.
Read about it here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-21/indigenous-australian-music-influenced-by-black-american-music/10016962
And listen here: http://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pgdGoPW426?play=true
Musicologist Gabriel Solis has been named a dean’s fellow of the College of Fine and Applied Arts.
Please see Interim Dean Peter Mortensen’s announcement below:
|
Donna A. Buchanan has received a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor Fellowship for her project “Bells in the Music and Culture of Bulgaria.” The award will support the preparation of Buchanan’s new book, The Girl in the Bell: Audible Cosmologies of Bulgarian Belief, which considers how the gendered “voices” of pastoral and ritual bells make audible contemporary Bulgarian beliefs about nature, the universe, spirituality, and society. Whether pealing from the belfries of Orthodox cathedrals, jingling from the necks of herd animals, or clamoring thunderously from the costumes of participants in Carnival masquerades, bells serve as powerful sonic metaphors of community belonging and musical beauty, their timbres informing both women’s singing and men’s instrumental practices. By attending to how bells resonate meaningfully for Bulgarians across diverse sociopolitical contexts and expressive media, this study demonstrates that we experience, know, and inhabit our world not just visually, but aurally.
Buchanan’s fellowship is one of six received by Illinois faculty this year. A campus announcement describing the awards can be found here.
Join us in welcoming our new cohort of graduate students! (They are pictured below with Professor Emeritus Bruno Nettl.)
Left to right: Wes Sharp, Benjamin Holbrook, Danielle Sekel, Jason Witt, Dr. Bruno Nettl, Melissa Ann Bialecki, Sarah Frances Holder, Hannah C Jellen
Illinois Musicology 