Musicology & Ethnomusicology

UGA Musicology & Ethnomusicology

The Musicology/Ethnomusicology program at the University of Georgia is a growing and innovative program that provides its students with training in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and musical analysis while also encouraging interdisciplinary connections with other units.  The greatest strength of the area lies in its diverse faculty, whose research interests include Classical, Romantic, and 20th-century music, popular musics, film music, music history pedagogies, music and religion, and gender studies, as well as regional geographic specializations in North America, Russia, Africa, and Latin America. 

At the graduate level, students may choose from small seminars on focused topics, pro-seminars that examine methodologies or large-scale issues, as well as lecture-oriented courses.  PhD students must choose a secondary discipline outside of music to supplement their research agenda.  All students in the graduate program are encouraged to develop a strong research profile and our students regularly participate in regional, national and international conferences and publish their work. 

Graduates of the Musicology/Ethnomusicology program have enjoyed much recent success.  The area currently enjoys a high placement rate for PhDs who choose to pursue an academic career.  Our undergraduate and masters students are regularly admitted into other top programs around the country.

Personnel

Naomi Graber

American music, Twentieth-century Music

Naomi Graber (assistant professor) joined the faculty of UGA in 2013. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that same year with the dissertation “Found in Translation: Kurt Weill on Broadway and in Hollywood, 1935–1939,” which earned her the Glen Haydon Award for an Outstanding Dissertation in Musicology. She…

David Haas

Professor

David Haas, Professor, obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1989 and joined the University of Georgia the same year. He teaches courses in late Romantic and early twentieth-century topics. His research focuses on Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Russian opera, Russian music criticism, and music and literature. He is the author of …

Jared Holton

Assistant Professor

Jean Kidula

Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology), Musicology & Ethnomusicology Area Chair

She joined the University of Georgia in 1998 after having taught at Kenyatta University and Pomona College. She teaches African Music, African-American Music, Survey of Music Cultures of the World, Topics in World Music Cultures, History, theory and methods in ethnomusicology, Seminars in Ethnomusicology. She also directs an African Music…

Rumya S. Putcha

Associate Professor of Music and Women's Studies

Her research interests center on post-Enlightenment, colonial, and postcolonial thought, particularly around constructs of citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, the body, and the law. Professor Putcha received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2011 and her first book, Mythical Courtesan | Modern Wife: Feminist Praxis in Transnational…

Joanna Smolko

Instructor

Stephen Valdez

Associate Professor Jazz/rock, Medieval/Renaissance ​

He joined the University of Georgia in 1997 after having taught courses in music history at the University of Oregon. Valdez teaches the history of rock music, the history of jazz, music of the late Renaissance and Baroque periods, and survey courses in music history. His research interests include the evolution of lead guitar solos in rock,…

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