Musicology doctoral candidate Larissa Irizarry is embarking on a busy season of conference presentations during the spring and summer of 2021. She will present her research on Janelle Monáe in May for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and in June for the Cultural Studies Association.

The Theodore M. Finney Music Library at the University of Pittsburgh has been awarded a grant of $145,897 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), under its Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program, to complete the  processing and digitization of the Mirskey Collection, an archive of sheet music for silent film accompaniment.

This past February, musicology doctoral student Hannah Strong presented a paper at the Harvard Graduate Music Forum’s Conference 2021 – To Begin Again: Music, Apocalypse, and Social Change. Participating in a panel on Apocalyptic Voice and Breath, Strong presented "I Can’t Breathe:" Contextualizing George Floyd’s Last Words in Hip Hop.”

She writes,

Juan Fernando Velásquez (PhD 2018) has been elected as incoming chair of the Ibero-American Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society (IAMSG-AMS). This group originated from the AMS Hispanic Music Study Group, established by Prof. William Summers of Dartmouth College in 1993 at the AMS Annual Conference in Montreal.

It is with great sorrow that we share the news of the passing of Elspeth Poultney Wissner and Dr. Anicet Mundundu, who earned degrees from the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt Podcast is Deane Root, the music department’s newest Professor, Emeritus. Deane recently retired from more jobs than most of us hold in a lifetime, including being the Director of the Center for American Music, the Fletcher Hodges, Jr. Curator for the Center for American Music, and Professor of Musicology for Pitt’s Department of Music where he served multiple terms as Chair.

Doctoral candidate and Fulbright Scholar Steven Moon had to cut his research year in Turkey short due to the pandemic, but he has still made significant progress in exploring the intersection of culture and medicine in that country. Moon is studying the role of music in Ottoman healing practices with specific interest in how this approach transcends mind/body dualisms.

Hannah Strong is a musicology PhD student at Pitt who completed her master's from Temple University in Music History. Her first publication, "Suck on My Balls Bitch: A Paradigm Shift," will be released as a chapter in an edited volume titled Diva: Feminism and Fierceness from Pop to Hip-Hop. The book is scheduled for publication in 2021 by Bloomsbury Academic.

Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt Podcast is musicology doctoral student Larissa Irizarry. Larissa is receiving significant recognition for her research into 21st-century opera and 1970s rock where she explores depictions of gender-based violence, interracial intimacy, and queer intimacy. She will be a Mellon Fellow in 2020–21 and was recently awarded Pitt’s Don O. Franklin Prize for Musicology for her paper on Kaija Saariaho’s opera Adriana Mater which explores rape-related pregnancy.