Austin McCabe Juhnke holds a PhD in musicology from The Ohio State University, and specializes in 20th-century American music. He is interested in the way music helps individuals make sense of their communities and their relationships to one another. In his research and teaching, he explores music in relationship to institutional politics, racial and ethnic identification, multiculturalism, historiography and heritage. 

McCabe Juhnke is a recognized expert on American Mennonite musical traditions. He has researched how white Mennonites performed an ethnic identity through four-part hymn singing, and how — during the Civil Rights era — Black, Latina/o and other minoritized Mennonites used music to intervene in this institutionalized notion of Mennonite belonging. His research combines oral history, archival and ethnographic methods. He has presented his work at the annual meetings of the Society for American Music and the Society for Ethnomusicology, and has published in Mennonite Quarterly Review, Anabaptist Historians, and Anabaptist World.

Austin McCabe Juhnke teaches on a wide range of topics in the School of Music. He relishes opportunities to talk with students about the music they value, and to introduce them to new ways of thinking about themselves and their musico-social lives.

Selected publications

• “Why do Mennonites sing in four-part harmony?,” Anabaptist World (“Ask a Question” series), April 24, 2023
• “The Lawndale Choir: Singing Mennonite from the City,” [pdf] Mennonite Quarterly Review 93, no. 3 (July 2019)
• “Rethinking 606, the ‘Mennonite National Anthem’,” Anabaptist Historians, November 28, 2017

Courses taught

Undergraduate Music-Major Courses
MUS 2241: Music History 2 (ca. 1750–1920)
MUS 3351: The World of Music (World Music)

Undergraduate General-Education Courses
MUS 2251: The World of Classical Music 
MUS 2252: History of Rock 'n' Roll 
MUS 3348: Music on the Move in a Globalized World 
MUS 3349: The Beatles in 20th-Century Music  

Graduate Courses
MUS 4500.02: Review of Music History (online)
MUS 5649: Western Art Music 2 (1870–today)
MUS 6645: Music’s Meanings (online) 
MUS 8950 Seminar in Musicology: “Music and the Politics of Inclusion”