Teacher. Scholar. Humanist.
I am an ethnomusicologist by training and trade. I am Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology at Oberlin College & Conservatory. My latest work–my scholarly passions, energy, and investments–involve digital humanities, public ethnomusicology, community engagement, collaborative scholarship, and decentering colonialist/racist/sexist legacies in ethnomusicology & academia.
I am a teacher-scholar, a locution that carries great significance for the way I think about teaching, scholarship, and the synergies between them. Encouraged and rewarded for engagement in the classroom, I have consistently invented and taught new courses, courses that explore and push at the boundaries of what it means to be a practicing ethnomusicologist today. It has allowed space for collaboration with students, along with colleagues beyond my discipline. Teaching has not only shaped but constructively redefined who I am as a scholar, the nature of my work, and my legacy in the field, not measured by the students who go on to graduate school but the countless others who go out into the world armed with empathetic listening skills, questioning ethical frames of engagement, and learning to work with and for communities. Teaching made me a better ethnomusicologist.
Research
Digital Humanities
Teaching
Community Engagement
Song in the Sumatran Highlands promises an “innovative, even cutting edge digital humanities project” (Anonymous Reviewer)
Song in the Sumatran Highlands, my exciting new project, is a large-scale digital humanities site. It has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer stipend and Oberlin College for a year-long research leave.
