Academic Work
I am a PhD candidate in Musicology at Brandeis University My primary research explores the relationship between humans and whales through sound, and the impact that framing their vocal expression as song in the 1970s prompted “Save the Whale” and many environmental efforts to stop whaling. You can read more on my article “Singing With Whales: Exploring Human and Non-Human Connections,” published in SEM News.
My 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).
I am currently conducting ethnographic research to study the effects that body image and fat phobia have on the careers of women and genderqueer instrumentalists within Western classical music institutions; while also exploring Lizzo’s role in body liberation and her challenging of the politics of respectability within musical performances.
During my masters at UMass I worked closely with my mentor Marianna Ritchey, and I 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 my thesis “The Voice of the Other: The Influence of Capitalism in the Representation of Gender and Race in Western Classical Music” here.
I hold a Masters of Arts in Music and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality from Brandeis University, a Masters in Music in Musicology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; a Graduate Performance Diploma in Violin from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and a Violin Diploma from Arrigo Boito Conservatory, Parma, Italy (BM Equivalent).