I'm Chair and Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. An avid gamer and lifelong pianist-improviser, I work at the intersections of cultural histories, disability studies, media theories, care ethics, race, and queerness. I received a B.A. in Music (Piano Performance) and English (Creative Writing) from Stanford University in 2007 and a Ph.D. in Musicology from Harvard University in 2013. My books include Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2014), Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Loving Music Till It Hurts (Oxford, 2019), Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (Oxford 2019, coedited with Gregory Barz), and A Cultural History of Western Music in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, coedited with Danielle Fosler-Lussier). I've contributed op-eds and features to Washington Post, Slate, TIME, Huffington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Pacific Standard.
As a social justice advocate, I'm a founding coeditor (with Andrew Dell'Antonio) of University of Michigan Press's Music & Social Justice Series; an elected representative for the American Musicological Society's Ethics Committee (2021–24); a past Board Member of JAG Productions, an incubator for theater and community formation; and an ambassador and volunteer for WISE, an organization seeking to end gender-based and intimate-partner violence in the Upper Valley and beyond. I serve on the boards of Journal of the Society for American Music, Music & the Moving Image, Women & Music, Ethnomusicology Review, Sound Studies, and Journal of Videogame Sound and Music. I previously served as Chair of the Dartmouth Music Department from 2020–22.
I'm the recipient of a 2023 Scholarly Innovation and Advancement Grant (Dartmouth), 2022–23 Radcliffe Fellowship (Harvard Radcliffe Institute), 2020 Jerome Goldstein Distinguished Teaching Award (Dartmouth), 2020 Irving Lowens Article Award (Society for American Music), 2020 Marcia Herndon Book Award (Society for Ethnomusicology), 2019 Richard Waterman Prize (Society for Ethnomusicology), 2018 Wetterhahn Memorial Award for Distinguished Creative or Scholarly Achievement (Dartmouth), 2017 Enhanced Junior Faculty Fellowship (Dartmouth), 2016 Philip Brett Award (American Musicological Society), 2014–15 Public Voices Fellowship (Op-Ed Project), 2014 William F. Milton Fund (Harvard), 2013 AMS 75 PAYS Subvention (American Musicological Society), 2011 Philip Brett Award (American Musicological Society), 2010 Mark Tucker Award (Society for American Music), and 2010 Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship (American Musicological Society). I was a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows between 2012 and 2016.
My forthcoming project is called Touching Pitch: Classical Improvisation as Everyday Practice. Composed of 5 narrative mini-games, 33 prose chapters, and 100 original piano improvisations (recorded between May 31, 2022 and May 31, 2023), Touching Pitch illustrates how culturally-hybridized pedagogies and practices of Western classical improvisation (a so-called lost art) may empower minoritized musicians to animate a spectrum of anti-racist, anti-assimilationist, anti-capitalist, and decolonial agendas in the twenty-first century. I'm also presently laying groundwork for two transnational ethnographies: Gaslight of the Gods: Chronicles of Trauma, Survival, and Restorative Justice in Music Education around the World (University of Michigan Press); and The Revolution Will Be Deafening: Sonic Artillery, Weaponized Peacekeeping, and Global Futures of Civil Protest (publisher TBD).
Appointments
2012-16: Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University
2014-18: Assistant Professor, Department of Music, Dartmouth College
2018-21: Associate Professor, Department of Music, Dartmouth College
2021-present: Professor, Department of Music, Dartmouth College
2020-2022: Chair, Department of Music, Dartmouth College
2022-2023: Rita E. Hauser Fellow, Harvard Radcliffe Institute
2023-present: Chair, Department of Music, Dartmouth College
Education
2007: B.A. - Stanford University (Music, English) with Distinction and Honors
2009: M.A. - Harvard University (Music)
2013: Ph.D. - Harvard University (Music)