Cody Norling recently started a new position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology at West Virginia University, where he will be teaching the music history sequence, graduate seminars in musicology, and general-education courses in music.

A dozen graduate students and faculty from UI attended the annual conference to share recent work and support researchers from across the state.

Spring break, it turns out, is also prime time for conferences. Here are a few highlights featuring Iowa students and faculty.

Musicology PhD candidate Zane Larson reviewed Leonard Bernstein in Context, a new collection of essays edited by Elizabeth A. Wells, for Musica Judaica Online Reviews.

Iowa faculty and students shared work on composer Ina Boyle, Linda Wardwell's music history booklets, and Duke Ellington's Mary Poppins album.

Graduate student scholars, composers, and performers gathered in Voxman to share new research, music, and camaraderie.

This university-wide teaching award recognizes those "who have demonstrated excellence in a rich variety of university teaching (e.g., undergraduate, graduate or professional, classroom, one-on-one) and contributed to curriculum and/or program development."

Dr. Marian Wilson Kimber's expertise on Fanny Mendelssohn and historical narratives on women musicians is featured in a recent article by Elizabeth Winkler, "The Rediscovery of Fanny Mendelssohn," for the Wall Street Journal.

Nathan Platte’s article, “Mixed Motives: Soviet Symphonies and Propagandistic Duplicity in The Iron Curtain (1948),” received a 2023 Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism. Published in the open-access journal Music & Politics, Nathan’s article on the repurposing of Soviet symphonic music in an anti-Communist Hollywood film is freely available.

Congratulations to Cody Norling (Musicology), who recently completed his PhD with a dissertation titled: “Opera in the Second City: Negotiating National Operatic Identities In and Around 1920s Chicago.” Cody’s work draws on archival documents and press clippings related to some of Chicago’s major opera presenters and supporting organizations to study “opera’s role as a perceived indicator of civic and national progress,” highlighting discourses around economy, class, race, and nationality.