MUSICOLOGY & ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
Though offering distinct degrees, our musicology and ethnomusicology programs are closely integrated, allowing our students to build a rich theoretical and methodological foundation grounded in the practices of music scholarship, broadly understood.
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The Programs
Following a robust series of coursework––beginning with introductory seminars in musicology and ethnomusicology––students embark on major thesis or dissertation projects, guided by our faculty and drawing on the resources of a major research institution. Recent graduate seminar offerings have included courses in music and race; public scholarship; music and leftist political movements; music, art, and architecture; ethnomusicological fieldwork; and Russian and Soviet music.
Unlike many peer institutions, we offer separate M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Students with a bachelor’s degree can thus attend a two-year M.A. program before they commit to a Ph.D. program. Students who attend UMD for the M.A. program must reapply for our Ph.D. Continuing directly to the Ph.D. only requires one additional year of coursework. Many of our top M.A. students choose to stay at UMD for their doctorate.
Funding and Teaching Assistantships
Our standard funding package includes full tuition remission, health insurance benefits, and a stipend provided through teaching assistantships. M.A. students are offered 2-year teaching assistantships and Ph.D. students are offered 4-year teaching assistantships. These assistantships enable our students to dedicate themselves to coursework and research while gaining invaluable experience teaching in the classroom. Graduate students assist for courses on topics such as Black music history, the history of popular music, and global music and identity, as well as courses in the undergraduate music history sequence. Since our program strongly values teaching as a core tenet of scholarship, we encourage students to take advantage of Maryland’s stellar Teaching and Learning Transformation Center.
Summer research grants and conference travel grants are also available. UMD offers several dissertation research and writing fellowships, and faculty assist students in applying for external grants and fellowships. Our students have an excellent track record for obtaining fellowships. Additional funding may be available through other departments, and many of our students also work part-time in our library’s Special Collection in Performing Arts.
How to Apply
We welcome applicants to our M.A. and Ph.D. programs in musicology and ethnomusicology; the application deadline is January 5. Applicants must apply to both the University of Maryland Graduate School and the School of Music. The School of Music application should include a personal statement, C.V., two writing samples and three letters of recommendation. The GRE is not required for admission. Further details regarding the application process are available here and specific requirements for applying to study musicology and ethnomusicology are available here. If you have further questions about this program, please reach out to Division Coordinator Olga Haldey.
Our Students & Alumni
In our program, students develop skills drawn from musicological and ethnomusicological methods to support their large-scale research projects while also building professional competencies essential for their future careers. Click here to read more about our current students. Some recent thesis and dissertation projects have focused on extreme metal and racial politics, festival music in the Dominican Republic, performance practice in early sound recordings, Armenian genocide commemorations, Jewish bluegrass performance, gender in thirteenth-century trouvère lyrics and music made and heard by commoners in medieval London.
We encourage the pursuit of music scholarship as both a community and a profession, and mentor our students to succeed within and beyond the academy: our graduates have successful careers teaching in universities, but also working in libraries, museums, arts and university administration, academic publishing and musical performance. Visit our alumni page to read more about jobs they hold.
Our Faculty
Our faculty are deeply engaged with major, ongoing research projects, which help inspire our teaching and student mentorship. Our work covers a broad range of historical periods and musical cultures through a variety of methodologies, and we present regularly at the annual meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology. Recent publications include acclaimed books (Robin and O’Brien, On Minimalism; Rios, Panpipes & Ponchos; Lie, Django Generations; Klotz, Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness), articles in prominent journals (Haldey on Bach in Fouetté), and other significant works (Haggh-Huglo’s two editions of medieval chant for saints).
Resources of a Research Institution
As part of both a world-class music school and Maryland’s flagship university, our students have access to a wide range of library materials and affiliate scholars right here on campus. Our School of Music is located in The Clarice, a state-of-the-art performing arts building that places our classrooms, concert halls, offices and the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, including its Special Collections in the Performing Arts, all under one roof. Our students frequently collaborate with performers, perform themselves in our top-tier ensembles, write program notes and deliver pre-concert talks.
All students benefit from opportunities for interdisciplinary interaction at UMD. Students may take courses in other departments at the university and within the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area, and pursue valuable interdisciplinary graduate certificate programs including Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities and Museum Scholarship and Material Culture.
Location Advantage
With campus only a short metro ride from Washington, D.C., our graduate students greatly benefit from being able to easily conduct ethnographic field research nearby. They complete internships with and utilize the resources of the Library of Congress, National Archives, Folger Shakespeare Library, the Kennedy Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Folklife Center.
Public Scholarship
Our faculty and students are currently engaged in numerous outreach efforts beyond the university, including pursuing internships for credit, writing essays for the New York Times, curating for RomArchive, blogging for Smithsonian Folkways, hosting the podcast Sound Expertise and reviewing local opera performances. We regularly offer a seminar on music and public scholarship, in which students engage in a wide variety of practices to reach audiences outside the academy and integrate public-oriented activities into our coursework and research projects.
Performance Opportunities
Our Asian and Caribbean music ensembles specializing in music from Bali, Japan, Korea, and Trinidad enable our students to explore music globally. These are the UMD Gamelan Ensemble, the UMD Koto Ensemble, the UMD Korean Percussion Ensemble and UMD Steelbands. The School of Music also offers top-tier choral, orchestral and wind ensembles in which graduate students may perform.
Colloquium Series
Colloquium events take place most Friday afternoons and may include guest speakers, workshops, and conference paper run-throughs. Each semester, we invite several distinguished scholars to give lectures and meet with graduate students during the Friday colloquium time. Recent visitors have included Maria Sonevytsky, Paula Harper, Megan Lavengood, Kerry O’Brien, Suzanne Cusick, Colin Roust, Michael Iyanaga and Salamishah Tillet. Follow us on Instagram to find out more about upcoming talks!
Faculty
Musicology & Ethnomusicology Division Coordinator
Olga Haldey
Associate Professor, Musicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Division Coordinator, Musicology & Ethnomusicology
3110G The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Full-Time Faculty
Barbara Haggh-Huglo
Professor, Musicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
3110F The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Kelsey Klotz
Assistant Professor, Musicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Affiliate Faculty, American Studies
3110H The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Siv Lie
Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Affiliate Associate Professor, Anthropology
3110B The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Fernando Rios
Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology
Affiliate Faculty, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
3110E The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
William Robin
Associate Professor, Musicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
3110C The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Stephanie Shonekan
Dean, College of Arts and Humanities
Professor, Ethnomusicology, Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Affiliate Faculty, The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Affiliate Faculty, American Studies
Part-Time Faculty
Josanne Francis
Director, Steelbands
Lead Community Engagement Program Coordinator, Center for Community Engagement
(301) 405-1941Yuriko Gandolfo
Lecturer, UMD Japanese Koto Ensemble
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Laura Schnitker
Lecturer, Ethnomusicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
3210G Hornbake Library
College Park
MD,
20742
I Nyoman Suadin
Director, UMD Balinese Gamelan Saraswati Ensemble
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Matthew Valnes
Visiting Assistant Professor, Musicology
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
3110D The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Sebastian Wang
Director, UMD Korean Percussion Ensemble
Musicology & Ethnomusicology
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
College Park
MD,
20742
Affiliate Faculty
La Marr Jurelle Bruce
Associate Professor, American Studies
Affiliate Faculty, School of Music
Affiliate Faculty, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Affiliate Faculty, The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Affiliate Faculty, Department of African American and Africana Studies
2324 Tawes Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Scott Trudell
Director of Undergraduate Studies, English
Associate Professor, English
Affiliate Faculty, School of Music
1128E Tawes Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Raff Viglianti
Affiliate Faculty, School of Music
Senior Research Software Developer, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
M.A. (Musicology)
| Course | Duration | Credits |
| Introduction to Musicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Introduction to Ethnomusicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Seminars | 2 courses | 6 |
| Electives | 4 courses | 12 |
| Thesis Research - May be replaced with two additional seminars | 2 semesters | 6 |
M.A. (Ethnomusicology)
| Course | Duration | Credits |
| Introduction to Ethnomusicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Introduction to Musicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Anthropology of Music | 1 course | 3 |
| Field Methods in Ethnomusicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Electives | 4 courses | 12 |
| Thesis Research - May be replaced with two additional seminars | 2 courses | 6 |
Ph.D. (Musicology)
| Course | Duration | Credits |
| Introduction to Musicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Introduction to Ethnomusicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Seminars | 7 courses | 21 |
| Dissertation Research | 2 courses | 12 |
Ph.D. (Ethnomusicology)
| Course | Duration | Credits |
| Introduction to Ethnomusicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Introduction to Musicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Anthropology of Music | 1 course | 3 |
| Field Methods in Ethnomusicology | 1 course | 3 |
| Seminars in Ethnomusicology | 2 courses | 6 |
| Elective | 1 course | 3 |
| Dissertation Research | 2 courses | 12 |