University of California-Riverside

Type of Program and Degrees Offered

Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, western music history and literature, theory/composition; B.A. in Music or Music and Culture. Full-time faculty of ten and approximately 24 graduate students as well as courses for over 500 non-majors each year. Collaboration with Anthropology, Dance, and Area Studies Programs. Strong area specialties in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

The Ph.D. program is complemented by an undergraduate major in Music and Culture, which offers a parallel interdisciplinary option to the existing music major. This B.A. program offers a predominantly scholarly and critical approach to music-as-culture from the perspective of research, criticism, and interpretation, and with an emphasis on historical and ethnographic approaches. A concurrent M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies is an option (see "Related Websites" for URL).

Special Resources

Central Javanese gamelan and Javanese calung, Japanese taiko ensemble, Philippine rondalla ensemble, Latin American and Andean ensemble, mariachi, and Mexican dance. Dynamic Latin American music resources, including the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music and the annual Encuentros/Encounters conference.

Full-Time Faculty in Ethnomusicology

René T.A. Lysloff. (Ph.D., Michigan) Associate Professor. Java/Indonesia; insular Southeast Asia performance traditions; media technologies; performance studies; popular culture; cultural studies. Allied faculty, digital composition.

Jonathan Ritter. (Ph.D., UCLA) Assistant Professor. Peru; Ecuador; the Andean region; Latin American folk music traditions; indigenous peoples; carnival and ritual studies; music and politics.

Deborah Wong. (Ph.D., Michigan) Professor. Asian American performance; Thailand, mainland Southeast Asian performance traditions; race and gender; ritual; performance studies; cultural studies; identity politics; popular culture; mass media.

Affiliated Faculty

Jayna Brown. Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies. Black performance in the U.S. and diaspora; vernacular dance and the body.

Derek Burrill. Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies. Digital media and video games.

Anthea Kraut. Associate Professor of Dance. Black vernacular, critical race theory, gender.

Sang-Hee Lee. Associate Professor of Anthropology. The evolution of human morphological variation.

Brian Lloyd. Associate Professor of History. The history of rock, radicalism.

Tiffany López. Associate Professor of English. Performance and cultural studies; Chicana and Latina drama.

Anthony Macías. Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies. Mexican and Chicano music and popular culture.

Juliet McMullin. Associate Professor of Anthropology. Medical anthropology; Pacific Islanders and Latina/os in the U.S.

Jacqueline Shea Murphy. Associate Professor of Dance. Native American performance.

Sally Ann Ness. Professor of Anthropology. Philippine dance; tourism.

Vorris Nunley. Assistant Professor of English. African American expressive culture.

Priya Srinivasan. Assistant Professor of Dance. Gender, immigration, citizenship, labor, and dance in the U.S. and Asian diaspora.

Linda Tomko. Associate Professor of Dance. Baroque dance reconstruction; early twentieth-century American dance.

Kiril Tomoff. Associate Professor of History. Soviet musical life and Russian music.

Carole-Anne Tyler. Associate Professor of English. Film and cultural studies.

General Program Statement

The music department is committed to changing the nature of music scholarship and pedagogy. We aim to break down the distinction between historical musicology, digital composition, and ethnomusicology, advocating new and sometimes radical perspectives in the study of music. Our research interests are interdisciplinary and especially strong in popular culture, cultural studies, race/ethnicity studies, gender and sexuality studies, violence and trauma studies, and posthuman/technology studies. We encourage applications from students who would like to take part in questioning accepted values and traditions in academic music studies.

Graduate classes are small, allowing the student to work closely with members of the faculty. Individual attention is given to the needs and interests of each student. Opportunity for independent research is given early in the program. Master’s thesis topics have included ethnographies of Ethiopian Christian ritual in San Diego, swing in Los Angeles, a film sound design studio in Burbank, the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, Filipino/a American students’ Pilipino Culture Nights, tourism in Bali, Cambodian American dance in Long Beach, CA, bluegrass in Southern California, music and the Japanese American internment, and global digital music communities. Doctoral dissertation projects include Ethiopian music and political violence, music and Mapuche indigenous identities in Chile, keroncong and musical hybridity in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the cultural politics of the National Artist Award in the Philippines.

Financial Support

Fellowship support is available.

Further Information

Department of Music, University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0325, USA. Phone: 951-827-3343.

Program Website

http://www.music.ucr.edu/

Related Websites

M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies website: http://seatrip.ucr.edu/programs/grad.html

Apply online to the Ph.D. program: http://graduate.ucr.edu/grad_admissions.html

The content for University of California-Riverside was last updated June 28, 2010.