Graduate Alumni News - Department of Music

Graduate Alumni News as of Spring 2022

Marcia Citron, then and now — *Left: Dr. Marcia Citron in January 1968, outside the Ackland building which held at that time, not just the Museum but also the Art History Department. Right: Dr. Marcia Citron now.*

Marcia Citron (Ph.D. 1971) generously established the Marcia J. Citron Graduate Research in Musicology Fund designated for Ph.D. candidates nearing the end of their time at Carolina in hopes that this extra funding for research will help them complete their degree. Citing her own time at UNC and the support she received from faculty as much of the reason for establishing the fund, Dr. Citron also noted how impressed she has been over the years with the quality of scholarship by UNC’s graduate musicology students. Read “Paying it forward and back.”

David VanderHamm (Ph.D. 2017) won the 2021 Richard Waterman Junior Scholar Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology Popular Music Section. Vanderhamm’s winning article “‘I’m Just an Armless Guitarist’: Tony Melendez, Disability, and the Social Construction of Virtuosity” was published in Volume 14 Issue 3 of the Journal for the Society of American Music. Read “Alumnus VanderHamm awarded 2021 Waterman prize.”

Graduate Alumni News as of Fall 2021

Ryan Ebright (Ph.D. 2014) received one of this year’s Kurt Weill Prizes from the Kurt Weill Foundation for his article “Doctor Atomic or: How John Adams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sound Design,” published in Cambridge Opera Journal in 2019. Read “Alumnus Ebright honored with Kurt Weill Prize.”

Jennifer Walker (Ph.D. 2019), West Virginia University Assistant Professor of Musicology, published the monograph “Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces: Transforming Catholicism Through the Music of Third-Republic Paris.” Read more here.

Graduate Alumni News as of Spring 2021

Naomi Graber holds up a copy of her new book Kurt Weill's America. — *Dr. Naomi Graber with her new book Kurt Weill’s America. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Graber)*

Christi Jay Wells (Ph.D. 2014), assistant professor of musicology at Arizona State University’s School of Music and affiliate faculty with ASU’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, published Between Beats: The Jazz Tradition and Black Vernacular Dance, with Oxford University Press on April 16, 2021. Read Dr. Wells’ Book Notes edition.

Douglas Shadle (Ph.D. 2010), Associate Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, published Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, with Oxford University Press on March 12, 2021. Read Dr. Shadle’s Book Notes edition.

William Robin (Ph.D. 2016), an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Maryland’s School of Music, published Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace, with Oxford University Press in February 2021. Read Dr. Robin’s Book Notes edition.

Naomi Graber (Ph.D. 2013), assistant professor of musicology at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia, published Kurt Weill’s America, with Oxford University Press on April 27, 2021. Read Dr. Graber’s Book Notes edition.

Graduate Alumni News as of Fall 2020

Ryan Ebright’s (Ph.D. 2014) research and publications on opera composer Anthony Davis was featured in the department’s Do the Work Wednesdays series. Read “DWW: Anthony Davis.”

William Robin (Ph.D. 2016) published an article in May in the New York Times on the very timely subject of pandemics and their musical impact titled, “The 1918 Pandemic’s Impact on Music? Surprisingly Little.” Read “Alumnus William Robin recently published in the New York Times.”