Staff
Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, Founder and Co-Editor
Dana Gorzelany-Mostak is an Associate Professor of Music at Georgia College & State University. Her research on music and American presidential campaigns appears in Music & Politics, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Her work on America’s Got Talent star Jackie Evancho appears in the edited volume Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music: Performance, Authority, Authenticity (Routledge) and in the journal American Music. In 2018 Gorzelany-Mostak won an Award of Excellence from the Broadcast Education Association for “Songs in the Key of President C: Music on the Campaign Trail,” a digital lecture funded by a grant from the Society for American Music. Gorzelany-Mostak is the founder of Trax on the Trail, a website and research project that tracks and catalogues the soundscapes of US presidential elections. At present, Gorzelany-Mostak is working with Jennifer Flory (Professor of Music, Georgia College) to create recordings of 19th-century campaign songs as part of the project “Songs of Political Persuasion: Hearing Music on the US Presidential Campaign Trail, 1840–1918.” In addition to writing essays for several public musicology websites, Gorzelany-Mostak has provided her expert opinion for news outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Vox, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Variety, Pacific Standard, Inverse, and The Boston Herald. Her 2023 book, Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency (University of Michigan Press), analyzes the official and unofficial musical activity surrounding 21st-century presidential campaigns and sheds light on how the racialization of sound intersects with other markers of difference, thus shaping the public discourse surrounding candidates, popular music, and the meanings attached to race in the 21st century (University of Michigan Press, 2023).
Naomi Graber, Co-editor
Naomi Graber is an assistant professor (limited term) at the University of Georgia, where she teaches classes on American popular song, film music, and twentieth century music. She earned her Ph.D. in 2013 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she won the Glen Haydon Award for an Outstanding Dissertation in Musicology. Her research focuses on Broadway and Hollywood in the 1930s, particularly the influence of Leftist political thought on popular entertainment and the ways in which anti-Fascist émigrés both influenced and were influenced by American culture. She is mostly focused on the career of Kurt Weill, a Jewish émigré who fled Nazi Germany and found success in the United States. She is also interested in the film and theater of today, particularly questions of gender and genre, and how those two issues intersect. Her article on the gendered nostalgia of Mamma Mia! was published in Studies in Musical Theatre, and her article on Weill’s Ulysses Africanus, an unfinished musical written for Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, is forthcoming in Musical Quarterly. Her research has been supported by a James W. Pruett Fellowship to work at the Library of Congress, and a grant to attend the Schönberg-Akademie in Vienna.
James Deaville, Co-editor
James Deaville (School for Studies in Art & Culture: Music, Carleton University) has published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Musicological Research, and Music & Politics, and has contributed to books published by Oxford, Cambridge, and Routledge, among others. He also edited Music in Television: Channels of Listening (2011). In 2012, he received a two-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to explore film trailer auralities. With Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, he has co-edited a special issue of Music & Politics about music and the 2012 presidential election in the United States. He is currently co-editing with Christina Baade an anthology for Oxford entitled Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production, and Audiences. He has published essays about music and the War in Iraq, the televised soundscape of war between the Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars, and the role of music and sound in media coverage of the Occupy Movement, among other topics.
Sarah Griffin, Research Assistant
Sarah Griffin is a junior Georgia College & State University pursuing a Bachelor of Music Education. She is a member of the Collegiate National Association of Music Educators (CNAfME) and participates in several ensembles including Georgia College’s Wind Symphony, Jazz Band, and Saxophone Quartet. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and spending time with family.
Zack Sheffield, Web/Database Developer
Zack Sheffield is a Software Engineering Principal at Infor, and has made a career of bringing technology to bear on problems at scale. His recent work on Big Data platforms has produced mission software and analytics for defense and commercial customers. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Master’s in Computer Science from The Johns Hopkins University, where he is also part-time faculty.
Austin Butts, Research Assistant
Austin Butts is currently pursuing a degree in music therapy, bringing a unique perspective to their contributions at Trax on the Trail. Austin’s experience in music therapy provides valuable insights into the psychological and emotional impact of political rally music, exploring how it brings people together, influences emotions, and spreads information. Whether supporting communication skills in the memory support unit with the Georgia War Veteran’s Home, motivating movement and recovery at Beverly Knight Olson Children’s Hospital, or studying the political persuasions in online media Austin has a love for the intentional use of music toward nonmusical goals.
Claire Kosobud, Research Assistant
Claire Kosobud is a senior rhetoric major with a double minor in English Literature and History at Georgia College & State University. She wants to pursue a career in speech writing. As a student, she is a member of the John E. Sallstrom Honors College and currently sits on the student advisory board for the English Department. Her involvement with Trax on the Trail has sparked a further interest in the marriage between music and persuasive policy.
Victoriyah Friend, Research Assistant
Victoriyah Friend is a junior psychology student at Georgia College & State University. She is currently a student researcher for Trax on the Trail, a website and research project that catalogs and analyzes the soundscapes of US presidential campaigns, andSongs of Political Persuasion, a project on 19th-century campaign songsters. Through this work she has developed an interest in abolitionist literature and how its rhetoric translates into music.
Riley Greer, Research Assistant
Riley Greer is a senior music major with an education focus at Georgia College & State University. A student in the John E. Sallstrom Honors College, she is the GCSU 2023 Concerto Competition Winner and a student researcher for Trax on the Trail and the Songs of Political Persuasion project. Working on this project has sparked her interest in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the music surrounding it.
Jennifer Flory, Research Assistant
Dr. Jennifer Flory is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Georgia College & State University where she conducts University Chorus and Max Noah Singers and teaches choral/vocal music education and conducting courses. Flory made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2018, directs honor choirs, and serves as an adjudicator for LGPE and Literary. Flory is also Director of Music at First Presbyterian Church in Milledgeville and performs in the community as a mezzo-soprano soloist. Flory is also a published photographer.
Flory’s research has been published as six issues of Research Memorandum Series. One of these issues was transformed into an online database, americantreblechoral.org. In 2014, Flory was initiated into Omicron Delta Kappa and selected as a Georgia Governor’s Teaching Fellow. In 2018, Flory was awarded the Council of Public Liberal Arts College’s Charles Dunn Award, for commitment to student success which goes “above and beyond. In 2021, Flory was recognized with a Noteworthy Performance Post-Tenure Review for excellence in service to the community, mentorship, leadership, and research. In 2022, Flory was invited to join Phi Kappa Phi and was chosen as a Women’s Leadership Faculty Fellow. In 2023, Flory received the Hampsong Education Fellowship in American Song from the Society for American Music with Dana Gorzelany-Mostak and was a participant in the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Leadership Institute.
Flory holds both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music Education Degrees from Otterbein College (now University); and both a Master of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.
Daniel McDonald, Producer, Trax Podcast Series
Daniel McDonald is the Operations Manager at WRGC 88.3 FM. In addition to providing the voice for the Lake Country’s Home for Georgia Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio, Daniel is actively seeking out the people and stories that best represent Milledgeville and Baldwin County. When he first heard about Trax on the Trail, he knew he had to find a way to feature the project on WRGC. The rest, as they say, is history.
Contributors
Sally Bick
Sally Bick is an associate professor of music at the University of Windsor in Canada. Her work focuses on the intersection of music and politics with special emphasis on music in film. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Journal of the American Musicological Society, Musical Quarterly, Journal of the Society for American Music, Acta Musicologica, and German Studies Review. She is presently completing a monograph on political voices in Hollywood film.
E. Douglas Bomberger
E. Douglas Bomberger is a professor of music at Elizabethtown College, where he teaches music history and piano. He previously taught at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, Ithaca College, and Goshen College. His doctoral dissertation for the University of Maryland-College Park–supported by a DAAD fellowship at the University of Mainz–chronicled the thousands of American musicians who pursued advanced training in Germany during the nineteenth century. Dr. Bomberger has explored topics related to transatlantic musical relations and the cosmopolitan tradition in American music. His books include A Tidal Wave of Encouragement: American Composers’ Concerts in the Gilded Age (Praeger, 2002), MacDowell (Oxford, 2013), and Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture (Oxford, 2018). His longstanding advocacy of women composers in his performances is reflected in his current scholarly research for a book on Amy Beach.
Dan Blim
Dan Blim is an Assistant Professor of Music at Denison University. He earned a PhD in Musicology and a Certificate in Screen Arts and Cultures from the University of Michigan, and his dissertation received the Society for American Music’s Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award. His published research has explored memorialization in John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, narrative functions in Bernard Herrmann’s score to Vertigo, and collage in Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, and he is currently developing a book on country music scores in 1970s films.
Paul Christiansen
Paul Christiansen has published on Czech music, Haydn, and music in political advertisements. His work has appeared in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Plainsong and Medieval Music, Notes, Echo: a music-centered journal, Journal of Musicological Research, Journal of the Society for American Music, MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, and 19th-Century Music. His book Orchestrating Public Opinion: How Music Persuades in Television Political Ads for US Presidential Campaigns, 1952-2016 will be published by Amsterdam University Press.
Eric Hung
Eric Hung is Associate Professor of Music History at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. His research focuses on Asian American music, recent Chinese music, music and new media, and contemporary music inspired by Balinese gamelan. Current projects include a book on cultural trauma in Asian American music, and an edited volume on Public Musicology. Hung is also an active pianist and conductor who has performed in Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, and throughout North America. He is also a member of New York-based Gamelan Dharma Swara, and the founder of the Westminster Chinese Music Ensemble.
Eric T. Kasper
Eric T. Kasper is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He earned his undergraduate degree in political science at UW-Eau Claire before earning his master’s, doctoral, and law degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Kasper previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin Colleges. He currently teaches courses on American politics, the judiciary, political theory, and U.S. constitutional law and politics. Dr. Kasper has authored or co-authored four books, including, with Benjamin Schoening, Don’t Stop Thinking About the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns (Lexington Books, 2012); he has written or co-written various book chapters and journal articles, including, with Benjamin Schoening, “‘I Won’t Back Down,’ or Will I?: The Law and Politics Surrounding Presidential Candidates’ Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Songs” (PS: Political Science & Politics, forthcoming 2016). Dr. Kasper’s research interests include politics and popular culture as well as the Bill of Rights. He lives with his wife and two children in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, where he also serves as a municipal judge. kasperet@uwec.ed
Joanna Love
Joanna Love is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Richmond. Her research and teaching reflect an interdisciplinary focus on popular culture, media studies, and the music industry. Love specializes in 20th- and 21st-century American and popular music and its role in multimedia, including advertising, video, television, and film. Her work has appeared in a variety of print and online venues, including the Journal of the Society for American Music, Music and Politics, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Trax on the Trail, and American Music, among others. She has forthcoming chapters about music in iconic television commercials for the Geico Insurance and Coca-Cola in edited collections by Oxford and Routledge. She is also co-editing an interdisciplinary book titled Contested Frequencies: Re-considering Sonic Representation in the Twenty-First Century and contributing a chapter on the music in the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Her recent book, Soda Goes Pop: Pepsi-Cola Advertising and Popular Music, was released by the University of Michigan Press in summer 2019.
Noriko Manabe
Noriko Manabe is Associate Professor of Music Studies at Temple University, conducting research on music and social movements and on popular music. She is the author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music after Fukushima (Oxford), which won the John Whitney Hall Award from the Association for Asian Studies, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Award, and Honorable Mention for the Alan Merriam Prize at the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her article on Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” in Music Theory Online won the Outstanding Publication Award from the Popular Music Section of the Society for Music Theory. She is writing a second monograph on the intertextuality of protest music and is co-editing (with Eric Drott) The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music. She is the series editor for 33-1/3 Japan, a book series on Japanese popular music at Bloomsbury Publishing.
Aaron Manela
Aaron Manela is a PhD Candidate in Musicology at Case Western Reserve University, and holds degrees from The University of Oregon and Brandeis University. His research involves the intersection of music with issues of identity, class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Past research has included notions of ethnicity in 19th-century Russian ballets, Jewish Cowboys in turn-of-the-20th-century Tin Pan Alley songs and Wild West Shows, and musical expressions of class and race on The Backyardigans. His current research looks at the way music and ideas of race, gender, and ethnicity work within children’s education television shows.
Justin Patch
Justin Patch teaches global and popular music in the music department at Vassar College. His research focuses on the auditory culture of contemporary politics and political campaigns in the US, sound studies, and on critical issues in ethnographic research and humanities education. His work has appeared in Soundings, The European Legacy, International Political Anthropology, The Journal of Sonic Studies, Americana, The Ethnomusicology Review, Zeteo, and the edited volume Critical and New Literacies: Teaching Towards Democracy with Popular Culture and Postmodern Texts.
Glenn W. Richardson
Benjamin Schoening
Hailed as “very talented,” Benjamin Schoening is one of the up–and–coming musical talents of his generation. His unique combination of talents and abilities as both conductor and singer has allowed him to gain a unique insight into the music he performs and has caused immediate success as a singer. Dr. Schoening has enjoyed much success as a recitalist throughout the United States and Europe focusing on Art Songs in the English language. His love for and understanding of poetry inspires his work in that area. In addition to performing, Dr. Schoening is a devoted teacher. He has served as a guest clinician for many events in the Midwest, Southwest, and Southeast United States and served as conductor of the 2007 Arizona Northeast Regional Honors Orchestra. In addition to his work in performance, Dr. Schoening also has a special interest in the use of music in the political landscape. This has inspired collaboration both in the classroom co-teaching political science courses, and in the publication of a book on the use of music in presidential campaigns. Dr. Schoening has held teaching positions at Northland Pioneer College (AZ) and the University of Wisconsin – Barron County and is presently an Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Georgia.
Caitlan Truelove
Caitlan Truelove is a 3rd-year graduate student in the Musicology PhD program at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she also completed a violin performance cognate with Giora Schmidt. This past year, Caitlan was editor for Music Research Forum, CCM’s graduate student journal. She has presented or will be presenting her work on film and television music at Music and the Moving Image, the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Congress, the Society for American Music, and the American Musicological Society, among others. In addition to her musicology studies, which are focused on the 21st-century television musical, Caitlan holds two bachelor’s degrees in Violin Performance and Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Music in Violin Performance from Syracuse University.
Former Staff and Contributors
Haley Strassburger, Research Assistant
Haley Strassburger is a junior at Georgia College and State University, where she is pursuing a Bachelor of Music Education with an Instrumental Concentration. She is a current member of the international music fraternity for women, Sigma Alpha Iota. She is a passionate percussionist, clarinetist, and pianist and is excited to contribute to this project.
Sarah Kitts, Research Assistant
Sarah is a professional singer and voice teacher based in Washington DC. A lover and believer in all styles of music, she maintains a private studio where she teaches evidence-based voice technique for the classical and contemporary commercial music singer. She holds a BA in Music from Georgia College & State University and an MM in Voice Pedagogy from Shenandoah Conservatory. When she’s not teaching, Sarah provides sing-a-long sessions to memory care patients with the Songs by Heart Foundation as well as singing in and directing multiple choirs in the greater Washington area.
Emily Abrams Ansari
Emily Abrams Ansari is an Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Her research considers national identity, politics, and music in the United States, particularly during the Cold War, and she has published articles on this topic in a number of scholarly journals. She is also at work on a book titled Americanism in a New Key: Nationalist Composers and the Cold War, which assesses the impact of the Cold War on American musical nationalism and its leading protagonists, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others. She is also interested in the politics of race, and her recent article for the journal American Music about the African American composer Ulysses Kay’s 1976 slavery opera Jubilee won the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Prize. Website: www.emilyabramsansari.ca
Ryan Raul Bañagale
Public Musicologist and Gershwin scholar, Ryan Raul Bañagale is an Assistant Professor of music at Colorado College where he offers classes on a range of American music topics, including musical theatre, jazz, popular music, bluegrass, and media studies. He received his PhD at Harvard University with the support of the American Musicological Society’s AMS-50 and Howard Mayer Brown fellowships. His dissertation became the foundation of his first book Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon published by Oxford University Press in 2014. As a member of the editorial board of the George Gershwin Critical Edition, he will be editing four separate arrangements of Rhapsody in Blue. A strong proponent of making musicology accessible to non-academic audiences, he is co-host of the monthly radio program Critical Karaoke: A Show About Music and the Ideas it Inspires as well as a daily two-minute module called A Day in the Life. Both programs can be accessed at CriticalKaraoke.com. Most recently he co-organized the Billy Joel Conference at Colorado College.
Twitter: @amusicology
Christianna Barnard, Research Assistant
Christianna Barnard graduated summa cum laude from Westminster Choir College with a Bachelor of Music in May 2015. She has presented her previous research on music and adolescent identity at the conference for the Canadian Society of Traditional Music at Cape Breton University this summer and at The Past, Present, and Future of Public Musicology Conference at Westminster Choir College in January 2015. As a student, she was a recipient of the first annual Arlene Wilner Award for Honors Excellence for her honors thesis on gender performance and homonationalism in the music of Mary Lambert and was a senior Andrew J. Rider scholar for the 2014-2015 academic year. She presented her honors thesis at Rider University’s Independent Scholarship & Creative Activities Presentations Day and Westminster Choir College’s Celebration of Student Research. Additionally, she is an avid choral singer and was a member of Westminster Choir, Westminster Kantorei, and Westminster Symphonic Choir as well as the blogger for Westminster Choir during her time at Westminster. She currently resides in Philadelphia and is preparing to pursue further study in gender studies and musicology. In the meantime, she makes aesthetically pleasing lattes with cardamom for the populace and spends an unacceptable amount of time rearranging her Frida Kahlo shrine.
Brian Barone
Brian Barone is a first year Ph.D. student in musicology at Boston University. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in guitar from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Julian Gray. Brian has served as adjunct professor of guitar at Wesley College and keeps busy on the Boston and New York independent arts scenes as a classical guitarist, rock multi-instrumentalist, and music director. Twitter: @brianrbarone
Courtney Blankenship
Courtney C. Blankenship is the current Director of Music Business at Western Illinois University (WIU). In 2017, she received the prestigious WIU College of Fine Arts and Communication “Excellence in Teaching” Award. An active community member, she co-founded a 501c3 publication “IParent Magazine” in 2006, and serves as President of the Band Boosters, a fundraising arm for the local Jr/Sr High School. Recently, she enjoyed participating in the Ready to Run™ Illinois campaign training program for women. Prior to her appointment, she held positions in the tourism industry, a law firm, in grant administration, and arts event marketing/public relations. She is a member of the College Music Society (CMS), Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA), the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE), Engineering Audio Recording Society of Chicago (EARS) and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS). Blankenship received a B.S. degree in Marketing and Minors in Piano Performance and Arts Management from Miami University of Ohio. Her M.A. in Arts Administration is from Indiana University-Bloomington.
Aly “Sam” Campbell, Social Media Coordinator
Aly “Sam” Campbell is a senior Mass Communication student focusing on PR and advertising at Georgia College. In addition to being a passionate student, Sam is a musician, graphic designer and writer. In her spare time, Sam enjoys Starbucks dates with her husband, teaching piano lessons from her home and playing with her Beagle/Jack Russell Terrier mix, Cooper. Twitter: @therealsamcam
David Dewberry
David R. Dewberry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Rider University. He earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Communication Ethics at the University of Denver in 2008. He is primarily a political rhetorician with a focus on free expression. He is the former editor of the Communication Law Review and First Amendment Studies. His work has been recognized with the Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression by the National Communication Association, the James Madison Prize for Outstanding Free Speech Scholarship by the Southern States Communication Association, and the Richard S. Arnold Prize for First Amendment Scholarship. He is the author of The American Political Scandal: Free Speech, Public Discourse, and Democracy. He is also the author of “Music as Rhetoric: Music in the 2012 Presidential Campaign” in Robert Denton’s Studies of Communication in the 2012 Presidential Campaign, and “Musical Rhetoric: Popular Music in Presidential Campaigns,” which appears in the Atlantic Journal of Communication.
Sarah Farmer, Research Assistant
Sarah Farmer is currently a student at Georgia College where she is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with a minor in Theater on the pre-medical pre-professional track. She is currently involved in undergraduate research in the biology department as well as with Trax on the Trail.
Travis L. Gosa
Travis L. Gosa is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University and faculty associate at Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality. He serves on the advisory board of Cornell’s Hip Hop Collection, the largest archive on early hip hop culture in the United States. Gosa is an expert on race, new politics, hip hop culture, and education. He is also the co-editor of The Hip Hop & Obama Reader (Oxford University Press, 2015), the first hip hop anthology to center on contemporary politics, activism, and social change. He can speak about the role of youth voters and race in national politics and the 2016 presidential election. Currently, he is finishing his manuscript School of Hard Knocks: Hip Hop and the Fight for Equal Education (University of Illinois Press), a book that explores how schools fail black students and why hip hop can help fix education in America. He has previously appeared on NPR’s Tell Me More and All Things Considered. Twitter: @basedprof
Alyssa Harris, Research Assistant
Alyssa Harris is a freshman at Georgia College and State University pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a choral concentration. She a new member of Georgia College’s Music Fraternity (Sigma Alpha Iota) and hopes to become a choral conductor at a college in her hometown of northeast Georgia.
Matthew Jordan
Matt Jordan is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. At PSU, he is co-director of the Social Thought Program, and is a North American representative to the Board for the Association for Cultural Studies. He writes and teaches on how popular culture and media technology are used to generate ideology and regimes of management in everyday life. Having recently written on such topics as Le Jazz: Jazz and French Cultural Identity (2010), “Obama’s Ipod: Popular Music and the Perils of Post-Political Populism,” Popular Communication (2013 ) and “Canned Music and Captive Audiences: The Battle over Public Soundspace at Grand Central Terminal and the Emergence of the New Sound.” The Communication Review (2014), he is now finishing a monograph entitled Signaling through the Soundscape: The Crescendo and Decrescendo of the Klaxon Automobile Horn.
Kassie Kelly, Education and Outreach Coordinator
Kassie Kelly, a recent graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, holds a Bachelor degree in Music and Political Science. A native of San Antonio, she sang in the Trinity choir program, was active in campus Residential Life, and was a member of a professional music fraternity. She enjoys coffee, making Spotify playlists, running, and keeping up with presidential elections. Kassie serves as Membership & Audience Engagement Coordinator at The Rivard Report.
Michael M. Kennedy
Michael M. Kennedy is a PhD student in musicology at the University of Cincinnati, where he received a Masters degree in music history in 2014. Recently he has served as an adjunct instructor at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music. His research focuses on American popular music, musical theater, and film music, while also considering these genres’ societal and political contexts. Currently he is preparing a dissertation that examines post-1970s musical theater orchestrations by investigating aesthetic, technological, business, and legal factors that contributed to the stylistic pluralism of Broadway’s postmodern era.
Carl Leafstedt
Carl Leafstedt is a music historian on the faculty of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in music from Harvard University with a dissertation on Bartok’s opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. A native of Iowa, he has taught at Trinity since 2001, where one of his regular courses has been a First Year Seminar on Music and Politics. At Trinity he helps administer the university’s new program in Arts, Letters, and Enterprise, an innovative way for students to blend business literacy with the liberal arts and sciences.
Katie Lipsiner, Social Media Intern
Katie Lipsiner is a senior Mass Communication student focusing on advertising at Georgia College. Katie likes writing, social media, dogs, outdoor activities and attending as many concerts as possible. When she isn’t in the classroom, she enjoys hiking the Appalachian Trail and exploring new places with friends and family.
Victoriana Lord, Web Designer
Victoriana Lord recently graduated from Georgia College with a degree in Management Information Systems. She greatly enjoys graphic design, photography, and coffee.
Cannon McClain, Research Assistant
Cannon McClain holds a Bachelor of Music from Georgia College and a Master of Music in Conducting from Mercer University. His research interests include the relationship between English composer Gerald Finzi and writer Thomas Hardy, the evolution of Arnold Schoenberg’s musical style, and the development of the Baroque sacred cantata. Currently, he is researching the relationship between hymnology and a local church congregation, and compiling data on the unique vocal enigma that is the tenor head-mix resonance. He is also a proficient conductor, composer, and vocalist, boasting two NATS state championships, a New York City world premiere choral piece, and an arranging portfolio which includes work commissioned by noted composer Frank Ticheli.
Jonathan Millen
Dr. Jonathan H. Millen is a Professor of Communication and Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts, Education and Sciences at Rider University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts and joined the faculty in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Rider in 1991. He served as department chair from 2005-2010. In addition to teaching a wide array of communication courses, he developed The Social Impact of Rock and Roll for the American Studies program and a course on conflict resolution for the Law and Justice program. In 1997 he was presented with the Rider University Award for Distinguished Teaching and in 2000 the Award for Distinguished Service. His most recent research has been in the area of political rhetoric while his earlier scholarship focused on the study of conflict resolution with an emphasis on mediation. Named to The Princeton Review’s Best 300 Professors, a past president of the New Jersey Communication Association, and a member of the editorial board of the Atlantic Journal of Communication, his research has been published in Mediation Quarterly, Human Communication, and Human Systems.
Megan Murph
Megan Murph is a PhD candidate in Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the University of Kentucky with a dissertation titled “Max Neuhaus, R. Murray Schafer, and the Challenges of Noise.” She is inspired by the music and art associated with the American avant-garde with additional interests in British Progressive Rock. Megan performs vocal jazz, keyboard, mbira, and recently, Gamelan Anglunk and Korean P’ungmul. She has presented her research at the Society for American Music Conference, International Association for the Study of Popular Music-Brazil, Acadprog (Dijon, France), Society for Ethnomusicology-Midwest, American Musicological Society-South, DOPE (Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference), Boston University’s Graduate Student Conference, and Brevard College. Megan has taught Creativity and Innovation in Rock Music (MUS 222) and Introduction to Music (MUS 100). She served as student co-chair of the Society for American Music’s Student Forum and as president of UK’s FOCUS (Graduate Music Research Association).
Stan Renard
Dr. Stan Renard is the Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Music Marketing Program in the Music Department at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Dr. Renard joined UTSA as part of the University’s Goldstar Initiative, which supports its recruitment and retention of world-class faculty members. He has the unique background of someone who has taught business courses in business schools and music courses in music departments—expertise which has allowed him to develop music business courses. Dr. Renard is an Assistant Director of the start-up incubator CITE (Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship). He is also a touring and recording artist, virtuoso violinist, violist, active conductor, and the founder and arranger of the Grammy-Nominated Bohemian Quartet. Dr. Renard holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts (DMA) from the University of Connecticut as well as a Doctorate in International Business (DBA) from Southern New Hampshire University. Previously held collegiate appointments include Colby College, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Connecticut, Providence College, Eastern Connecticut State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and University of California at San Diego.
You can read about Dr. Renard and his work on the following websites: University of Texas at San Antonio Faculty Page Music Biz Day Center of Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship The Bohemian Quartet
Travis N. Ridout
Travis N. Ridout is Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy and Associate Professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at Washington State University. He is also co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project and serves as chair of the Political Communication section of the American Political Science Association. Ridout received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, and his research on political campaigns and political advertising has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Communication, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, Annual Review of Political Science, and in several book chapters. Ridout’s most recent book, The Persuasive Power of Campaign Advertising, was published in 2011 by Temple University Press.
Michael Saffle
Michael Saffle is Professor of Music and Humanities at Virginia Tech. He earned his joint Ph.D. in musicology and humanities at Stanford University and has published articles and reviews in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Notes, Acta Musicologica, Asian Music, the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, the Programmhefte of Bayreuth’s Wagner Festival, Music & Letters, the Journal of Popular Film and Television, and the Leonardo Music Journal, as well as contributions to the International Dictionary of Black Composers and other reference works. His books include Franz Liszt: A Guide to Research, revised and republished by Routledge in 2004 and again in 2009, and he is currently working on a book-length discussion of Liszt’s compositional methods. Among his recent publications are two articles co-authored with Hon-Lun Yang of Hong Kong Baptist University on musical utopianism and China’s 12 Girls Band, as well as a chapter of his own about “Rural Music on American Television, 1948-2010” for Music in Television: Channels of Listening. A forthcoming article about “User-generated Campaign Music and the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election” will appear soon in Music and Politics. As a teacher Dr. Saffle has three times won Virginia Tech’s Certificate of Teaching Excellence; in 2007 he received the William E. Wine “lifetime” Award from Tech’s Alumni Association. As a scholar, he has held fellowships from the Fulbright and Humboldt Foundations as well as the American Philosophical Society, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy. In 2000-2001, he held the Bicentennial Professorship of American Studies—a Fulbright “Distinguished European Chair”—at the University of Helsinki; in 2008, he served as Au Yeung King Fong Research Fellow in Hong Kong. On his sixtieth birthday, Dr. Saffle was honored with a ‘Festschrift’ published as an issue of the cultural-studies eJournal Spaces of Identity [Volume 6, No. 3 (3 December 2006)]. msaffle@vt.edu
Stuart Schimler
Stuart Schimler is the President of American Pioneer Music, a record label that produces traditional music related to American history. He holds a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley. American Pioneer Music has produced two albums of presidential campaign songs: Abraham Lincoln and the 1864 Election (2013) and The Candidates from New York (2016) Mr. Schimler has been published in numerous books, including Deadball Stars of the National League (Potomac Books, 2004), Deadball Stars of the American League (Potomac Books, 2006), The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (McFarland, 2005) and Music in American Life : An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture (Greenwood, 2013). His company currently runs www.electionsongs.com and can be found at www.facebook.com/electionsongs.
Andrew Sproule, Research Assistant
Andrew Sproule is a candidate in the MA in Music and Culture program at Carleton University. He attended the University of Guelph, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music, specializing in jazz studies and working as a research assistant for Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP). Andrew’s research focuses on the development of a methodology to incorporate musical improvisation in the classroom and to frame improvisation as a locus for creative development.
Teddi Strassburger, Copy Editor
Teddi Strassburger is currently a senior at Georgia College and will graduate in May 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a minor in French. In addition to her academic work, she is the Editor of The Corinthian, Georgia College’s student research journal, as well as a Student Ambassador for Georgia College. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, traveling, and playing piano and flute.
Carol Vernallis
Carol Vernallis’s areas of specialization are music video and recent film; her research deals more broadly with questions of sound and image in moving media. Her first book, Experiencing Music Video (Columbia University Press), attempts to theorize the genre. Her second, Unruly Media: Youtube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema (Oxford University Press), takes account of a new mediascape driven by intensified audiovisual relations. The book considers techniques and strategies that are shared between the three forms of digital media it focuses on. She’s now working more closely with directors and other practitioners who create innovative audiovisual work across platforms and media – her book-in-progress is entitled Transmedia Directors – and she is asking about the viewer/listener’s experience of audiovisuality in today’s media-saturated, multi-platform swirl. She is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics and The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media.
Reba Wissner
Reba Wissner is on the faculty of Montclair State University, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Ramapo College of New Jersey, and Berkeley College. Dr. Wissner received her M.F.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from Brandeis University and her B.A. in Music and Italian from Hunter College of the City University of New York. She is the author of several articles on seventeenth-century Venetian opera, Italian immigrant theater in New York City, and music in the 1950s and 1960s television, and has presented her research at conferences throughout the United States and Europe. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including a travel grant to Venice for dissertation research from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Pendragon Press published Dr. Wissner’s first book, A Dimension of Sound: Music in The Twilight Zone, in October 2013, and she also serves as the series editor for their new Music and Media book series. Her second book, titled We Will Control All That You Hear: The Outer Limits and the Aural Imagination, will be published by Pendragon Press in 2016. She is also working on a collaborative database and book project: Cues and Contracts: Music and the American Television Industry examines music cues and their reuses as well as administrative documents related to American television music production.