Graduate and Undergraduate News
Graduate Student News
Amanda Black presented papers at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Indiana in November 2019 and at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Bloomington, IN Groove the City, Urban Music Studies Group at Leuphana University in Luneberg, Germany in February 2020. She also published “‘Little Dancing Indians’: Tradition and Utopian Listening in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico,” in the Journal for the Society of American Music.
Jamie Blake received a Summer Dissertation Writing Fellowship from the Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. She presented her paper, “Russian Doll: Anna Pavlova, Coppélia, and Ballet in the United States” at the Society for American Music annual meeting in July. In September, Jamie presented her work in the Carolina Seminar series of UNC’s Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies and will present her paper, “A Transnational Space for a Modern Musical Russia: Modest Altschuler and the Russian Symphony Society of New York” at the upcoming meeting of the American Musicological Society in November.
Erica Fedor presented her paper, “Dropping Science: Friction and Collaboration in U.S. Hip Hop Diplomacy,” at the virtual annual meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology. This fall, she also served on the Fulbright Campus Committee at her alma mater, Wake Forest University.as awarded a Richard Bland Fellowship for Summer 2019 based upon Erica’s proposed project to complete a summer internship at Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., where she worked as a Cultural Diplomacy Intern.
Elias Gross was awarded a 2020 Summer Research Grant from the UNC Center for Study of the American South (CSAS). This award supports Gross’ Master’s thesis research on Appalachian balladeer Aunt Molly Jackson. Gross presented versions of this research in July 2020 at the King’s College of London-UNC joint conference and in September 2020 at the South Central Graduate Music Consortium (SCGMC). Gross was also chosen as a Graduate Teaching Fellow to teach a course in the Carolina Away COVID Investigation series for the 2019 Fall semester. The course, “Artistic Southern Futures after Covid-19” was developed with CSAS and Southern Futures, through which Gross was a fellow in the 2019-2020 academic year.
A. Kori Hill gave the keynote address for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s “Celebrating Florence Price” event in November 2019. Her review, “Florence Price: Violin Concertos” was published in the Journal of the Society for American Music and her review of Naomi André’s Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement is forthcoming. From July 2018 to late 2020, Kori was the Director of Social Media for The Harry T. Burleigh Society. She has bylines in The Harry T. Burleigh Society Blog, I Care if You Listen, and the Seattle Symphony.
Aldwyn Hogg, Jr. was awarded The University of North Carolina Institute of African American Research’s (IAAR) Graduate Student Summer Research Grant (GSSRG). He presented papers at the at Black Communities: A Conference for Collaboration in Durham, NC in September 2019 (“‘Whitey on the Moon:’ Apollo 11 and African American Lunar Rhetorics and Poetics”) and at the 39th Annual Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Ethnomusicology Conference in Chapel Hill, NC at the beginning of March 2020 (“Queer Nightspots and the Soundings of Utopia”).
Mike Levine was awarded an Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship for Spring 2020 by the Graduate School. Mike’s dissertation project is titled “Lo Encontré en el Paquete: Media Piracy and Cultural Exchange in Cuba’s Offline Internet.” He presented his work at the Society for Ethnomusicology’s annual meeting in November 2019. In July 2020, he received the Eileen Southern Fellowship at the Society for American Music’s annual conference.
Sarah Lindmark presented “‘Hip Hop Causes Violence’: Arguments and Analyses Concerning Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’” at the American Musicological Society Meeting in Boston, MA in the fall of 2019.
Erin Pratt was awarded a Summer Research Fellowship for Summer 2020 by the Graduate School. This award supported her dissertation project, which focuses on the aesthetics of German strophic song since the eighteenth century. At the 2019 meeting of SCGMC, Erin presented a paper entitled “The Late[st] David Bowie: On Blackstar and the Privilege of Late Style.” Erin also presented at the 2020 meeting of the UNC-KCL joint conference, delivering her paper “The Eternal Beginner: Repetition and Identity in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.”
Eduardo Sato received a Mellon Conference Travel Award from UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas, and was set to present his paper “Musical aesthetics in dialogue: Mario Pedrosa, Camargo Guarnieri and the Pan Americanism” at the Brazilian Studies Association International Conference, in Austin, TX but it was postponed due to the pandemic.
Kelli Smith-Biwer presented “Visualizing #WAFGate: Mapping Gendered Rhetoric in the Online Audiophile Community”at the South Central Graduate Music Conference in September 2019. She also was a co-designer and organizer for the “Vinyl—Gender—Trouble” Workshops in collaboration with UNC Music Library.
Kendall H. Winter presented her paper, “Melinda and Her Sisters: Reconsidering a Suffrage Operetta as Pageantry,” at the second annual Darkwater Women in Music Festival in March 2020 and again at the American Musicological Society Southeast Chapter meeting in October 2020, where it was selected as the winner of the Student Presentation Award for 2019-2020. She continues to represent the Music graduate students as their Senator to the Graduate and Professional Student Federation. In September 2020, Kendall was elected to serve as the first President Pro Tempore of the GPSF Senate.
Pruett Fellows Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pruett Fellowship was not awarded this past summer.
Undergraduate News
Paapa Berko, class of 2020, released his premiere mixtape O.P.E.R.A which highlights elements of classical voice and hip-hop infused with R&B. The mixtape has boasted impressive select songs on its own, with “Lavi$H” receiving radio play in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Alabama, and our very own North Carolina! He just dropped a new music video to the song “Battle Scars“, which highlights a man, amidst pain and despair, finding hope through the restorative power of Christ.
Anne Frances Jarrell, class of 2021, was one of five inaugural recipients of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Sally Ann Forrester College Scholarship. Sally Ann Forrester is widely considered the first female professional bluegrass musician, and this new scholarship celebrates her legacy with awards solely for women bluegrass musicians in college. Speaking about the honor, Jarrell said, “This award is very meaningful to me because it can be difficult for young women to find their place in a field of music that historically lacks women onstage. I know personally when I first got into the bluegrass scene back home, I would find myself at a jam as the only woman there and the only person under the age of 50. It’s great to see the IBMA honoring Sally Ann Forrester’s legacy in a way that provides opportunity to those less represented in bluegrass.”
Sophia Rekeibe, class of 2021, participated in the 2020 Virtual Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program. MURAP is a paid summer fellowship designed to foster the entrance of talented students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups within the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts into PhD programs and faculty positions in U.S. colleges and universities. She spent an intensive ten weeks developing her original research project and participating in graduate development classes with 19 other undergraduates from across the United States. Under the guidance of Dr. Michael Figueroa, her summer research examined how Mona Haydar, a Muslim Arab American rapper, is responding to contemporary Orientalism and global patriarchy through her imagery and musical content. Sophia is currently working towards publishing and presenting her work at different conferences and symposiums.
Kennedy Miller, class of 2022, and Isabella Kosempa, class of 2024, were semifinalists in the national level of the National Association of Teachers of Singing student auditions.
Phi Beta Kappa The department is proud to announce five music majors as new initiates into Alpha of North Carolina Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa this fall: Lila Kenny Dunn, David Sarber Green, Emily Gail Kramer, Emma Katherine Schubart, and Sydney Thai.