Program Overview

Music Ph.D. with a concentration in Ethnomusicology

Overview

The Music Ph.D. with a concentration in Ethnomusicology is a doctoral degree program that focuses on the study of music as an integral part of culture. Through fieldwork, students learn about local history, language, and customs, and conduct musical analysis to understand the ways in which individuals learn, create, and understand music in different cultural communities.

Program Details

• Program Type: Doctoral Degree
• Format: On Campus
• Estimated Time to Complete: 2-3 years
• Credit Hours: 60 (with prior M.S.), 90 (with prior B.S.)

Requirements

• Tuition & Aid: [Information not available]
• How to Apply: [Information not available]

Why Earn a Degree in Ethnomusicology?

Courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level are open to all students regardless of major. The program emphasizes doing ethnomusicology, challenging students to engage musical experience in all of its dimensions in preparation for careers in both academia and the public sector.

Marketable Skills

• Pedagogical practices
• Music editing, copying, transcribing, arranging
• Public event management
• Book/journal editing, creating, promoting
• Advance data collection, analysis, and interpretation

Program Highlights

Our students have published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at international conferences, and have received significant external grant support, including a 2017 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and two nationally competitive Theodore R. Presser Foundation Graduate Music Awards (2016, 2018).

Faculty research includes music and ritual, music and nationalism, music and migration, world music analysis, popular music studies, gender studies, and sound studies.

Courses You Could Take

• Current Issues in Ethnomusicology (3 hrs) Topics include investigative research into current issues in ethnomusicology.
• Proseminar in Ethnomusicology (3 hrs) This course is a comprehensive study of social thought about the field of ethnomusicology from 19th-century comparative musicology to contemporary studies of global and popular music.
• Music Cultures of the World (3 hrs) This course is a selected survey of music cultures of the world and is an examination of musical traditions from a perspective that emphasizes music as an integral part of society and culture.
• Ethnomusicology Field and Research Methods (3 hrs) This course is an exploration of the relationship between shifting theoretical research paradigms and how they have affected field methodology. Students will conduct close readings of representative ethnographies, several short field assignments and reports, and a field research project, resulting in a final paper.
• World Music Analysis (3 hrs) Topics include analytical approaches to world music; theoretical and practical issues in transcription; and development of new paradigms for transcription, analysis, and graphic representation of music.
• Anthropology of Sound (3 hrs) This course examines sound from a cross-cultural perspective by opening up a dialogue about alternative sonic practices which challenge many taken-for-granted notions about contemporary theories of sound.