Current Students

Christina DeCiantis holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Performance from Furman University. She has played the violin for eighteen years, and has been a private instructor for almost nine years. Her research interests include Ethnomusicology, specifically East-Asian folk music, and polyphony in twelfth-century Notre Dame. When she is not playing her violin or researching, Christina loves to write, sing, and dance swing and salsa. She also enjoys cooking and has a brown belt in the Korean martial art of Hap Ki Do.

Megan Eagen earned degrees in Physics and Music Composition from Iowa State University in 2007.  Her senior recital, made up entirely of original works, included three chamber pieces, a song cycle, a choral sextet, and three movements from her first symphony, “Bells for Raskolnikov.”  Megan received her MA from the University of Chicago in 2008.  In her master’s thesis, entitled “Appropriation and Assimilation: Presence and Significance of Marian Texts in the 17th Century Lutheran Liturgy,” she examined the role of Mary in Protestant liturgical works composed during the Thirty Years War.  Megan’s musicological focus continues to be seventeenth century liturgy and counterpoint, though she is also interested in plainchant, polyphony, Schenkerian analysis and Irish traditional music (“Trad.”).  Megan has played piano for over twenty years and oboe for fifteen.  She continues to compose and teach piano, while also participating in the UNC Symphony Orchestra.  Outside of music, she enjoys running, Ceili dancing, reading, writing, and spending time outdoors.

Naomi Graber is a recent graduate of Brandeis University where she received degrees in Music and English Literature. She hopes to study both the late eighteenth century and in American musical theatre. When not studying, you might find her singing, playing Scrabble, or contra dancing when the opportunity arises.

Benjamin Haas, a native of Western North Carolina, is a first-year graduate student at UNC.  He holds a B.M. in music education from Cedarville University and an M.M. in musicology from the University of North Texas.  While at UNT, Benjamin completed a thesis on the intersection of children’s music and leftist pedagogy in 1930s America.  His research interests include 20th century American music, music and politics, and music in educational contexts.

Catherine Hughes completed her BA in music and French at the College of the Holy Cross. Before starting at UNC, she spent a year teaching English in Bergerac, France. Her research interests include 19th and 20th century French music, and opera. She has played the cello for fourteen years, and enjoys playing in chamber ensembles.

Virginia Christy Lamothe is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music and Dance History at Vanderbilt University as well as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. Virginia was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a first prize winner of the Lemmermann Foundation Award for her dissertation The Theater of Piety: Sacred Operas for the Barberini family in Rome (1632-1643). Virginia has two upcoming publications of her research on music and renaissance dance in Early Music and a collection of essays on performance practice by Steglein Press. Virginia has been selected this year by the Nashville Ballet as a guest speaker. This year she has read papers on seventeenth century Roman opera at the International Meeting of the Society for Seventeenth Century Music, as well as the International meeting of the Research Center for Music Iconography. She has also read papers on dance and performance practice at conferences including the national meeting of the American Musicological Society in 2004. Currently Virginia is serving on the Committee for Career Related Issues for the American Musicological Society. Virginia is also teaches renaissance dance and courses on the history of Commercial music and Hip Hop music and culture.

Tim Miller is originally from Kensington, Maryland, and received his B.M. from the University of Delaware.  In 2007, he received his M.M. in the History of Musical Instruments from the University of South Dakota, with a thesis on the origins and development of the pedal steel guitar.  While a graduate assistant at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, SD, he conducted research in several European archives and collections, and read papers at conferences for the American Musical Instruments Society.  His primary research interests involve the individual roles of instruments and instrumentalists in small ensembles, particularly in European music of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, as well as American popular and country music of the first half of the twentieth century.  Tim is an active performer on double bass, lute, and theorbo, and is frequently found playing sitar, oud, mandolin, pedal steel, or whatever other stringed instruments he finds lying around the house.

Vanessa Pelletier is originally from Québec City. She completed her  Bachelor of Music degree with Distinction at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 2007, and in 2007-2008, she was a Post-degree student in the German Department at Queen’s University. Vanessa’s interests are in mediaeval liturgical and sacred music, particularly plainchant and Aquitanian and Notre Dame polyphony. In particular, she is interested in stylistic analysis of this period. In addition to her musicological studies, Vanessa is a member of The Malyshko Collegium, an early music ensemble directed by Dr. Olga E. Malyshko, and with whom she has recorded a CD entitled Musical Echoes of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In her spare time, Vanessa enjoys studying plants, reading French literature and working on her calligraphic skills.

Karen Shadle, a fourth year graduate student from Louisville, Kentucky,  received her B.A.from Centre College in 2005 with majors in music and government. Karen loves to travel and has studied local music cultures abroad in Morocco and Northern Ireland. In 2007, she completed a thesis on the operas of Mozart and his contemporaries. She is currently working on a dissertation that explores American psalmody during the Revolutionary War period. A pianist and singer, Karen enjoys the occasional performance opportunity and is active in several community groups.

Chris Wells graduated with high honors from Guilford College with a BA in music and political science. He earned departmental honors in music with a thesis applying methodology from comparative politics to the debate on “registers” within voice pedagogy. Now a first-year student at UNC, Chris is interested in Jazz and other African-American music from the late nineteenth century through World War II and connections with dance in both social and performance contexts. This interest is informed by Chris’s experience dancing, performing, and teaching Lindy Hop, Charleston, and other early Jazz dances both in the U.S. and in Europe. Other interests include German and American art song, music and political revolutions, and "entrance music" in professional wrestling. Chris also writes regular articles on medical liability issues for Greensboro-based Medical Justice Services, Inc.