2026 Board of Directors Election Candidates

Candidate for Director-at-Large

I serve as Professor of Musicology and Associate Dean for Faculty in the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern. At Northwestern I am also affiliate faculty in the programs in Comparative Literary Studies, Critical Theory, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and the Black Arts Initiative. I have previously served the Society as a member of the Council (2020–2023), the Pisk Prize Committee (2016–2019), the AMS Fellowship Committee (2023–2026), and the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender (2019–2022). I also served as chair of the LGBTQ Study Group (2012–2015). I am committed to working with the society’s members and staff to ensure that the AMS functions as an unparalleled resource for its members while it opens up vibrant spaces for the exchange ideas about what music does in the world.

Degrees: PhD, Columbia University; BMus, Rice University.
Research Areas: U.S. and European modernism and experimentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; music, collectivity, and friendship through the artistic world of Morton Feldman; the experimental music community Wandelweiser; Julius Eastman.
Publications: Saving Abstraction: Morton Feldman, the de Menils, and the Rothko Chapel (Oxford, 2019); Morton Feldman: Friendship and Mourning in the New York Avant-Garde (forthcoming).
Awards: Paul Sacher Foundation; the American Council of Learned Societies; the American Philosophical Society; Faculty Research Grant (The Graduate School at Northwestern University).
Administrative Experience: Associate Dean for Faculty and Director of Graduate Music Studies (Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University).
AMS Activities: Council (2020–2023); Pisk Prize Committee (2016–2019); Fellowship Committee (2023–2026); Committee on the Status of Women and Gender (2019–2022); Chair, LGBTQ Study Group (2012–2015).

Candidate for Director-at-Large

I would bring to the Board of Directors the perspective of a mid-career scholar who has taught for 15 years at Carleton College, a liberal arts institution located in the Upper Midwest. I received my PhD in 2006 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and also served on the faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory. I have been chair of the Capital Chapter and the Popular Music Study Group, and served on the Chapter Activities, Music in American Culture Award, and Lewis Lockwood Award committees. I have also been active in the Society for American Music, sitting on the editorial board for its flagship journal and awards committees and leading conference local arrangements. With only one exception, I have attended every AMS national meeting since beginning graduate school in 2001. I would seek to ensure that the organization operates on solid footing to support the work of its constituents.

Degrees: PhD and MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research Areas: American rhythm and blues; the music of Motown.
Publications: I Hear a Symphony:Motown and Crossover R&B (University of Michigan Press, 2017); Listening to the Music of Motown; co-author, What’s That Sound: An Introduction to Rock and Its History (W. W. Norton, 2006); Marvin Gaye: The Detroit Years (forthcoming).
Awards: 2024 National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Stipends; American Philosophical Society’s Franklin Research Grant.
AMS Activities: Council, (2021–2024); Chapter Activities Committee (2013–2015, Chair 2015); Lewis Lockwood Award Committee (2024–current, Chair 2026); Chair, Popular Music Study Group (2018–2020)

Candidate for Director-at-Large

As Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—where I also hold the rank of Professor of Music—I bring extensive experience in higher education administration to the AMS Board of Directors. Prior to joining RPI, I served as Dean and Professor of Music History at The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. Across both roles, I have developed deep expertise in budget oversight, fundraising, grant-writing, and curriculum development that I would bring to the Board.

My current research explores the intersections of music, technology, and multimedia, with a particular focus on video games. Recent publications include the edited volumes The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound (2024) and Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology (2025). I have also served on the boards of several non-profit arts organizations, and have designed and taught courses in arts management.

Degrees: PhD and MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; BA, Emory & Henry University.
Research Areas: Intersections of the arts, humanities, and technology in contemporary culture, especially in video games.
Publications: Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music (Oxford, 2018); co-edited
Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound (Oxford, 2024), Music in Video Games (Routledge, 2014), Music in the Role-Playing Game (Routledge, 2020), and Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology (Brepols, 2025).
Administrative Experience: Dean, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Dean, Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam.
AMS Activities: Council (2019–2020); Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship Committee (2015–2019).

Candidate for Director-at-Large

I envision an AMS that draws strength from the full breadth of the musical landscape. My perspective is grounded in the daily realities of the diverse communities I serve. At a California community college of more than 70,000 students — including first-generation, veterans, and formerly incarcerated learners — I witness firsthand how music functions as a meaningful cultural lifeline. At a music conservatory, I lead graduate seminars in labor relations, public policy, and philanthropy, examining the forces that quietly sustain our field. My public musicology work with performing arts institutions further transforms scholarly inquiry into shared community experience. I wish to bring to the Board a commitment to a Society that is intellectually rigorous, economically aware, and deeply responsive to the multifaceted populations defining the future of musicology.

Degrees: PhD, New York University; MM, The Juilliard School; BA and BS, Stanford University
Research Areas: Philanthropic patronage as foundational to American arts policy since the mid-twentieth century.
Publications: “A New Patronage Model in Postwar America” in Revisiting the Historiography of Postwar Avant-Garde Music (Routledge, 2023); articles in Dramaturgie Musicale Contemporaine en Europe, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, The Juilliard Journal, and Molecular and Cellular Biology
Awards: California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office grant titled, “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy & Practices: Innovative Best Practices.”
Administrative Experience: Chair, Mount San Antonio College Music Department (2014–2018); faculty
data coach coordinator for Mt. SAC Title V Grant “Creating and Equity-Minded Campus Culture to Improve Student Outcomes”; affiliated scholar of Los Angeles Opera; served on the board of the Arts District Los Angeles Business Improvement District.
AMS Activities: Council (2019–2022); Journal of the American Musicological Society Editorial Board (2024–current); Committee on Career-Related Issues (2018–2022, chair 2020–2022); Membership and Professional Development Committee (2020–2022); Development, Donor Outreach and Awards, Grants, Fellowships Task Force (2020–2021)