Department:
Musicology

Contact:
sfiol@esm.rochester.edu
(585) 274-1544

BA, Lewis & Clark College (1998); MMus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2003); PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008). He has completed three years of research in India and has also carried out fieldwork projects in Paraguay, Chile, and Zimbabwe. He was the recipient of the Fulbright-Hays and Wenner-Gren dissertation research grants (2004-5) and the American Institute of Indian Studies junior fellowship (2006-7). His dissertation investigates the development of vernacular, mass-mediated music in the central Himalayas, and the ways that this music both sustains and undermines attempts to delineate a regional political and cultural movement within India. He has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Notre Dame (2005-6), and has also taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2002-4). He has presented papers or lecture-demonstrations at Cornell University, Syracuse University, Oberlin College, Ithaca College, Northwestern University, Millikin University, and Illinois Wesleyan. He also performs on the sitar, piano, mbira, and a number of Himalayan percussion instruments, and he has led Zimbabwean mbira ensembles at both the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois.