Elena Arredondo – PhD Candidate
Elena’s research interests are in eighteenth and nineteenth-century American music.
Graduate Certificate, American Culture Studies Program
Caleb Boyd – ABD, Musicology
Caleb’s dissertation focuses on Oscar Levant as a composer and as an early interpreter of George Gershwin's music in the concert hall and outdoor stadium, as well as on film and radio. His research interests include music and politics of the early twentieth century, exile studies, music and film, jazz, and cultural studies of the American South.
Graduate Certificate, Film and Media Studies Program
Teaching Citation, Washington University Teaching Center
Hannah Campbell-Smith – PhD Candidate, Musicology
I am primarily interested in studying exoticism and the trend of folk music borrowing among American composers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For my dissertation, I plan to examine Arthur Farwell’s involvement in the “Indianist” movement and the works that he published through his Wa-Wan Press (1901-1912).
Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Cultural Studies.
Daniel Fister – PhD Candidate, Musicology
Daniel primarily studies collegiate a cappella and the construction of whiteness. Working within a variety of critical questions including whiteness studies, vocality studies, sound studies, and popular music studies and ethnography, he locates how a cappella aesthetics, performance, and discourse constitute power, identity, and community. His other work concerns musical theater, especially questions of race, performance, and audience; Anglo-American concert music and queerness; and music history pedagogy.
Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Culture Studies
Ward Francis – PhD Candidate, Music Theory
Ward’s primary research areas are in timbre and musical syntax, with emphasis in understanding recorded popular music modern composition through music cognition. He directs these interests towards the analysis of idiosyncratic composers and artists, including Radiohead, Harrison Birtwistle, Debussy, and Scriabin. His master’s thesis discusses rock timbral language in Radiohead’s early albums, connecting the disparate soundscapes of their albums through consistent ideological relationships. He also studies pedagogical technique as well as intertextuality in Orphic compositions.
Felipe Guz Tinoco – PhD Candidate, Musicology
My research interests rest mainly in the study of musical practices of the South American diaspora in the United States, forced transnational displacement, and collaborative ethnomusicology.
Joe Jakubowski – ABD, Music Theory
My dissertation research focuses on temporal-formal structures in Spectral music from the 1970s to the present. I aim to explain the complex rhythms and forms of Spectral music from a listener’s perspective, grounding my theorizing and analysis in psychologically-informed perspectives such as meter theory, musical communication, ecological psychology, event cognition, conceptual modeling, motor-mirror neurons, and empathetic embodiment. These psychological approaches further elucidate new aspects of Spectral composers’ theories, because they composed with psychological norms and limitations in mind. A culminating chapter considers social, cultural, and ideological context through a narrative analysis of some major Spectral works.
Teaching Citation, Washington University Teaching Center
Rachel Jones – PhD Candidate, Musicology
Rachel Jones’ primary research interests include film music, 21st century popular music, instrument timbre, and barbershop vocal harmony, as well as gender and sexuality in music more broadly.
Graduate Certificate, Film and Media Studies Program
Kathryn Kinney – ABD, Musicology
The working title of Katie’s dissertation is “Sounding Anxiety: American Evangelical Identity and Christian Pop Music, 1968-1975.” Centered on the Jesus Movement of the 1970s, the project pursues questions related to evangelical identities in terms of aesthetics, theology, and race as they were negotiated and reified through musical practice by countercultural Jesus People and conservative religious practitioners. Katie’s broader research and academic interests include interactions between music technology/presentation methods and spirituality, gender and authority in religious music, and teaching American history through the lens of popular culture.
Tony Li – PhD Candidate, Music Theory
My research interests lie primarily in the music of the Classical and Romantic eras. I am particularly interested in the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Gabriel Fauré. My work thus far includes a study of the evolution of Fauré’s harmonic language through his songs for voice and piano, and the role of examining voice leading motions in analyzing non-functional progressions.
Jorge Modolell – PhD Candidate, Musicology
Jorge Modolell’s research centers on music of the 19th century, reception studies, music criticism and composer Franz Liszt.
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship
Lillian Pinto de Sá – ABD, Musicology
Lillian Pinto de Sá works on the music of the Devotio moderna, a religious movement that exerted considerable influence on 15th- and 16th-century Western Europe. Her dissertation considers how adherents influenced musical and liturgical practice through their work as manuscript copyists. It also outlines the role of devotional writing, compilation, and adaptation in the movement’s Latin monophonic song repertoire. Lillian has another ongoing research project on music drama and education in 17th-century Jesuit schools.
Ashley Pribyl – ABD, Musicology
Pribyl’s primary areas of research include the Broadway musical, music in post-war New York City, American politics, and queer and feminist studies. Her dissertation explores collaboration in the 1970s Harold Prince-Stephen Sondheim shows, illustrating how this partnership created shows open to complex, political interpretations. Pribyl’s methodology is centered around bringing critical theory into the archives and exploring research across disciplines. She is also interested in the intersection between sexism and the aging body, timbral semiotics, and the impact of the HIV/AIDs crisis on the Broadway musical.
Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Cultural Studies.
Daniel Viggers – ABD, Music Theory
Daniel Weaver – ABD, Musicology
My research focuses on musical Anglo-Saxonism and the interactions between American and British musical nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, I am interested in how themes of individualism and racial identity emerged from shared anti-Germanic and anti-modernist outlooks. My dissertation, currently in progress, approaches these issues from the perspective of composers associated with the Second New England School, primarily Edward MacDowell and Horatio Parker. My master’s thesis looked at American composer Harry T. Burleigh’s secular music during the World War 1 era.