Marie Comuzzo
Musicologist | Ecofeminist Activist | Musician
Marie Comuzzo studies how sound mediates the relationship between humans and whales, and how the recognition of their vocal expression as song has shifted humans’ perception of them. Her advisor is Bradford Garvey.
Recently her article “Singing with Whales: Exploring Human and Non-Human Connection” was published by SEM Student News. Marie is currently working on her Ph.D. at Brandeis University in Musicology, and is a visiting faculty at Mount Holyoke College.
Their essay “Sounding alongside Whales: A Deep Appreciation of Whale Songs and New Frontiers in Human-Whale Connections” is forthcoming in Listening to the Swan Song: Towards a Subjectivity of Non-Human Organisms in Music and (Music-Related) Literature of the Past and Present, edited by Piotr Kociumbas and Joanna Godlewicz-Adamiec (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, Imprint of BRILL Deutschland).
Her specializations also include the role that beauty standards have in the careers of women and gender queer instrumental performers “The Pure Musical Vessel: Shaping Beauty Standards for Young Women and Genderqueer Instrumental Performers,” for which she was awarded the Sagan Family Graduate Research Grant – and the effect that capitalism and the witch hunts had on the representations of women in the Western music canon.
During her masters at UMass, Amherst she worked closely with Marianna Ritchey, and conducted musicological research on the intersection between the witch hunts, the establishment of capitalism in Europe, and consequential underrepresentation of women and BIPOC in the Western musical canon. You can read and download Marie’s thesis “The Voice of the Other: The Influence of Capitalism in the Representation of Gender and Race in Western Classical Music”
Marie also works at Brandeis University Press as Website Design Manager & Publishing Associate. She recently redesigned entirely the website and works on anything design related, and on acquisition in environmental studies and music.
Originally from Italy and Germany, Marie holds a Masters in Music and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University Press, a Masters in Musicology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; a Graduate Performance Diploma in Violin from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and an undergraduate degree from the Arrigo Boito Conservatory in Parma, Italy. Previously to pursuing an academic career, she was a professional violinist and premiered many original works by US based composers in the Boston and Amherst areas, served as Concertmaster for operas and symphonic concerts both in the US and in Italy, and toured with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, and Eastern Europe.
When not studying, she loves to play music, garden, cook, read, swim, kayak, spend time with her loved ones, make art, and play with her cat friend Zenobia.