Presenters
Sumanth S. Gopinath is an assistant professor of music theory at the University of Minnesota. He is working on two book projects: one on issues of race and ethnicity in Steve Reich’s music, and another on the ringtone industry. His other research interests include post-WWII American art- and popular music, cultural theory (especially Marxism), intersections of politics and music (or culture generally), and the globalization of cultural production. Click here for a PDF of his paper, “Trajectories of the Political Ringtone: Hugo Chávez and the Referendum of 2007.”
Ellen Koskoff is professor of ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music. Her articles have been widely published, and her book Music in Lubavitcher Life (2000) won a 2001 Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music scholarship. She has held many positions with the Society for Ethnomusicology, including a term as president from 2001-2003. In 2007-2008 she lived in Bali, where she performed with a Balinese Gamelan. She is director of Eastman’s World Music Certificate and Ethnomusicology Diploma Programs, and directs Eastman’s Balinese Gamelan Lila Muni. Click here for a PDF of her paper, “Musical Conversations in Bali.”
Carol A. Muller is an associate professor of the anthropology of music at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a specialist in South African music, critical ethnography, comparative religion, gender studies, diaspora, and historiography. She is the author of South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation (second edition, Routledge, 2008). Click here for a PDF of her paper, “Jazz Calls, the World Responds.”
W. Anthony Sheppard is professor of music at Williams College. His research interests include crosscultural influence and Orientalism, 20th-century opera and music theater, film music analysis, and American music history. He is the author of Revealing masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater (University of California Press, 2001). His article on “Global Exoticism and Modernity” is in the forthcoming Cambridge History of World Music, and his new book Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination will be completed in late 2008. Click here for a PDF of his paper, “Global Exoticism and Modernity: The Case of Chinese-Language Pop Music.”