Welcome! I’m Marie Comuzzo, a musicologist, environmental activist, and multimedia artist. I am currently traveling the world to pursue an interdisciplinary dissertation at Brandeis University.
I research the political, ethical, and environmental consequences of musical encounters between humans and whales. I also write about the historical and contemporary ways in which Western, Eastern, First Nations, and Indigenous musicians, scientists, activists and traditional cultural bearers listen to and with whales to protect our oceans. In pursuit of this work, I was awarded a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship in 2025.
As part of this project I am weaving a digital commons of people who deeply care about whales across the world. Listening With Whales is a multi-layered digital project where multiple ways of knowing converge. We are co-creating this space to learn to hold and celebrate our differences and work together to create a better future.
Outside of my academic work, I plant fruit trees, write poetry, play and sing, and make mosaics in Sicily.
Below, a mosaic I made in 2025, watching over our fruit orchard, in Scicli (RG), Italy, inspired by my work at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, where I explored the relationship between ocean monsters and whale taxonomy in medieval times. I wrote some of my reflections in a blog post for the Renaissance of the Earth titled “How Kētos became Whale: Oceanic Cosmologies in Sky and Sea.”
I am also conducting research on the role that fatphobia and beauty standards play in shaping the careers of women and genderqueer musicians in the United States. I hold master’s degrees in Musicology from UMass Amherst–where I worked closely with Marianna Ritchey, Miriam Piilonen, and Emiliano Ricciardi— and Brandeis University, where I also earned a master’s in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, advised by Karen Hansen and Taylor Ackley. I currently work closely with my dissertation advisor Bradford Garvey, mentor Marianna Ritchey, and ACLS/Mellon external advisor David Rothenberg, as well as many other collaborators, within musicology, marine sciences, and environmental peace building.
Before pursuing an academic career, I performed as a violinist, and studied in Italy at the Conservatorio Arrigo Boito in Parma and at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
I am an active member of several societies, both in music and environmental studies. I serve as Website Manager for the Ecocriticism Study Group, and Brandeis University Press, as Student Board Member of the Journal of Musicology Pedagogy at the American Musicological Society, and as 2026, I am a content editor at Environmental History Now.
Doing field recordings with humpbacks in Maui. December 2024.
