Lecture Series
Lectures in Musicology is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries. The series invites conversation with experts across the discipline. Numerous university centers and institutes at Ohio State also provide valuable opportunities for interdisciplinary research. Those of particular interest include the Center for Cognitive Science, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Hilandar Research Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, the Slavic and East European Studies Center, the Center for African Studies, the Center for Folklore Studies, the Humanities Institute, the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute, the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Offered Mondays at 4 p.m. and in person unless noted otherwise.
Attendance is free.
- In-person at the 18th Avenue Library, 175 W. 18th Ave. (Music & Dance Library, second floor, room 205). Campus visitors, please use either the Tuttle Park Place Garage or the Ohio Union South Garage. All other garages in the vicinity of the 18th Ave. Library are closed to visitors before 4 p.m.
Spring 2025
Lectures will be held on MONDAYS at 4 p.m. at 205 Music/Dance except the William Poland Lecture (Thursday, Feb. 20 at 5:30).
Co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries and the School of Music.
January 27
Johanna Frymoyer, assistant professor of music theory, University of Notre Dame, presents “Topical Affordances in Modernist Performance Practice.”
February 3
Elea Proctor, assistant professor, Department of African American and African Studies at Ohio State, presents “Black Women and Blackface Minstrelsy at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.”
Tuesday, February 4 | 4–6 p.m. | Faculty Club, Main Lounge
Inaugural Lecture: Shawn Wallace, professor of jazz saxophone, presents "Authentic Representation and Systemic Exclusion in Black American Music." Registration required. The Arts and Humanities Inaugural Lecture Series is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences.
February 17 | Featured in The Lantern
Dylan Crosson, PhD candidate in musicology at Ohio State, presents “Audible Orthodoxies: How Contemporary Worship Music Turns Evangelical Values into Musical Style.”
Thursday, February 20 | 5:30 p.m. | Timashev Recital Hall
William Poland Lecture: Form and the Song Persona. The 2025 William Poland Lecture will be presented by Drew Nobile, associate professor and chair of music theory at the University of Oregon's School of Music and Dance.
March 31
Jason Buchea, associated faculty and PhD candidate in musicology at Ohio State, presents “Massamba Diop: Becoming the Sonic Embodiment of the Black Panther."
All events are subject to change.
Autumn 2024
- 9/16/24 | "The Politics of Hope in the Time of Crisis." With Matt Sakakeeny, associate professor of music at Tulane University. Sponsored by EMIC, Graduate Student Interest Group for Expressive Culture; co-sponsored by the School of Music and The Ohio State University Libraries.
- 9/23/24 | Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Theatre | Screening of Dani Kouyaté's film Katanga: The Dance of the Scorpions (2024). Supported by an Ohio State Arts and Humanities Large Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences and co-sponsored by the School of Music and Department of African American and African Studies.
- 9/24/24 | Faculty Club, Grand Lounge | Dani Kouyaté joins Prof. Ryan Skinner (Music and AAAS) for Skinner’s “Inaugural Lecture,” “Dialogue as Humanistic Inquiry.” Kouyaté and Skinner introduce their collaborative book project, Openings: The Life, Work, and Worldview of a Cinematic Griot, and discuss Kouyaté’s new film.
- 10/7/24 | "Voices and Authority in Everyday Japan." With Joshua D. Pilzer, associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto. Co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries and the School of Music.
- 10/28/24 | "Imagining the Homeland in Times of Trauma: Immigrant Musical Theater and the Great War." With Peter Graff, visiting assistant professor at Denison University. Sponsored by EMIC, Graduate Student Interest Group for Expressive Culture; co-sponsored by the School of Music and The Ohio State University Libraries.
- 11/4/24 | "Radical Sonic Disidentifications: Decolonial Sounds at Tremor." With Abigail C. Lindo, assistant professor, Comparative Studies and African American and African Studies at Ohio State. Co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries and the School of Music.
Spring 2024
- 1/22/24: Resounding the Korean War (1950–1953): Music, Amateurism, and Feminism in Dalian. With Bess Xintong Liu, visiting assistant professor of music at Kenyon College. This lecture is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries; the Council of Graduate Students Arts and Culture Committee; and EMIC, the graduate student organization for the study of expressive culture.
- 2/13/24: Psychology Building, 1835 Neil Ave. Room 35 | The Eloquence of Anger: Zulu ngoma men’s song and dance. With Louise Meintjes, Duke University. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for Historical Research, the Department of Anthropology, and the Ethnomusicology program of the School of Music.
- 2/22/24: 18th Ave. Library, 175 W. 18th, Room 340 Colloquia | The Music Theory area held the William Poland Lecture on February 22. George Lewis, American composer, musicologist and trombonist, presented There Are Black Composers in the Future: New Music and the Heterogenous Sound Ideal.
- 2/26/24: Sing with me: Mennonite music and entrenched systems of power. With Katie Graber, associated faculty, musicology. This lecture is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries and the Center for the Study of Religion.
- 3/4/24: Disordering Mysticism, Organology, and Restitution: the Ruptured Afterlives of North African Torah Scrolls. With Ilana Webster-Kogen, Joe Loss Reader in Jewish Music at SOAS University of London and visiting associate professor at Yale University. This lecture is sponsored by the Melton Center for Jewish Studies, co-sponsored by the School of Music Ethnomusicology program, EMIC graduate student organization for the study of expressive culture, and The Ohio State University Libraries. Supported by the Diane Cummins Community Education Fund.
- 3/18/24: Esotericism and magic in Sun Ra and Alton Abraham’s creative practice. With Anna Gawboy, associate professor and area head of musicology and theory. This lecture is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries and the School of Music.
Autumn 2023
- 10/9/23: Centering Artists and their Communities in Hip Hop Higher Education. With Mark Katz, John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and founding director of the U.S. State Department hip hop cultural diplomacy program, Next Level. Co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries; the Mershon Center for International Security Studies; and EMIC, the graduate student organization for the study of expressive culture. We are grateful for funding provided by the Center for Ethics and Human values.
- 11/6/23: See Me Now: Domestic Violence in LGBTQ Pop Songs. With Lauron Kehrer, assistant professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology in the Irving S. Gilmore School of Music at Western Michigan University. Co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries and EMIC, the graduate student organization for the study of expressive culture.
- 11/16–11/18: Symposium — Polyphonic Culture: Early Music on the 21st-century Horizon. Co-hosted by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the School of Music. This symposium explores issues in the contemporary scholarship on, and performance of, historical choral music. Full schedule and more details at CMRS.
- 11/20/23: Zinester Same As Punks: Constructing Punk Publics in Japan Through Print Materials. Presented virtually by Robert Dahlberg-Sears, lecturer, Liberal Arts at Sophia University (Jōchi Daigaku, 上智大学), Tokyo, Japan. Co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries.