As we work from home and reckon with COVID-19 in a thousand different ways, it may help to recollect the activities of the previous month, when “social” was not inevitably paired with “distancing.” The graduate students in musicology, theory, and composition collaborated beautifully through their hosting of the 2020 Midwest Graduate Music Consortium. Nathan Platte and undergraduate researcher Anastasia Scholze cohosted a mini-course at FilmScene titled “Contenders and Composers of the Fifties.” 

Congratulations to Ryne Carlson, who successfully defended his masters thesis! Ph.D. student Cody Norling recently completed a review of Alexandra Wilson’s Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain,  now available in the Journal of Musicological Research.

The Plymouth United Church of Christ in Des Moines recently hosted Dr. Suhadolnik as a featured speaker in their study group devoted to The New York Times’ 1619 Project.

Marian Wilson Kimber’s article, “Musical Iowana: Iowa Women’s Clubs’ Promotion of Iowa Composers,” recently appeared in The Annals of Iowa.  As part of the duo, Red Vespa, Wilson Kimber continues to perform women’s spoken-word compositions. In November Wilson Kimber was honored with a distinguished Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she received her undergraduate education.

Dr. Matthew Arndt has just gotten back to Iowa City after spending the summer and fall months conducting new research and contributing to workshops.

The musicology area congratulates our most recent graduate, Dr. Michele Aichele! 

Ethnomusicology Today, a podcast produced and hosted at UI by Dr. Trevor Harvey, is featured in an article published the Iowa City Press-Citizen. 

We are honored to have alumna Dr. Jama Stilwell (Cornell College) back on campus for an Obermann Center Humanities for the Public Good symposium this upcoming Friday (November 1). Ph.D. candidate Megan Small took time to collaborate again with music librarian Katie Buehner on two new orchestra-related videos. Prof. Nathan Platte recently published a brief reflection on his study of Hollywood scripts and other film-related materials held in the special collections of Simpson College and the University of Iowa.

The 24th annual Midwest Graduate Music Consortium will be hosted here at Voxman, March 6-7, 2020. The website for the conference and the call for papers and scores is now live! The Midwest Graduate Music Consortium invites paper and performance submissions.

Summer for PhD student Cody Norling meant finding that elusive balance across research, writing, and teaching.