I've completed all my PhD coursework at Columbia University and am currently in the field conducting research for my dissertation on "Regimes of Value for Czech Popular Musicians in the Digital Era." I do feminist ethnography and critical cultural theory of U.S. and Czech Republic popular music cultures. I use post-reflective anthropology, exchange theory, science and technology studies, network theory, the sociology of taste, performance studies, cultural studies, and gender and sexuality theory among other theories. I generally focus on the following aspects of popular music: circulation, political economy, fine art/pop crossovers, pop music avant gardes, popular music criticism, the culture of recording, reproduction, distribution and playback technologies, and audience reception.
I am currently the assistant editor of the peer reviewed journal Current Musicology and the former student chair of IASPM-US.
My Masters thesis addressed the crossover of fine artists into popular music performance in the contemporary New York City indie/dance scene and focused on the musicians Casey Spooner (Fischerspooner), Rob Corradetti (Mixel Pixel) and Lalena Fissure (The Color Guard). It was titled “Fine Art Education and Popular Music: A Crossover of Competence.” Papers derived from this thesis were given at IASPM-US 2006 and the Experience Music Project Pop Conference 2006.
Papers/Talks/Workshops given:
Jiny Pohled (Queer Eye): How to Rock like a Girl
EMP2010: Nostalgia for cassette culture in the MP3 age (presented on cassette)
EMP2009: Computer Love(r)s
EMP2009 Co-organizer: Dance This Mess Around: 2nd Annual Feminist Working Group
IASPM-US 2009: Tape-trading, Tuzex-shopping Depešaci: Depeche Mode as underground megastars in 1980s Czechoslovakia
IASPM-US 2008: Myspace is the Message: How a Czech Band Went from Local to Transnational in a 2.0 Minute
EMP 2008: Getting Closer: Extreme Loudness and the Body in Pain/Pleasure
EMP2009 Co-organizer: Feminist Working Group
SPARK2007: Attention music trogs, snobs, plebes, elites: Bad may be better when writing about popular music
EMP2007: Selling Sad: How Hot Topic Made the Mall (Safe for the) Miserable
EMP2009 Organizer: Ellen Willis Tribute
IASPM-US2006: O Superman: Gender and pop music performance by art-school trained musicians
EMP2006: Poo pooing pop’s poseurs: An analysis of anxiety around liking art-school trained musicians and their work
EMP2005:Dancing, democracy and kitsch: Poland’s Disco-Polo
EMP2004: The Art of Noise: How the Providence, RI Loft Scene Hears its Godawful Racket
EMP2003: The film remains the same: The making and deconstruction of rock myths in punk music documentaries
Conference Chairs:
ASA2007: Rock Photographs: Bodies and Landscapes
Conference Committees:
Chair, Columbia Music Scholars Conference 2009, Sound In Circulation
Columbia Music Scholars Conference 2008
Experience Music Pop Conference 2007
Academic Publications:
“Dancing, democracy and kitsch: Poland’s Disco-Polo” in Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music (Duke University Press, 2008)
Other Positions
Student Officer, IASPM-US Board 2008-2010
Columbia Ethnomusicology Center Assistant: 2008-2009
Committee on Electronic Publishing and Open Access, Current Musicology
Instructor, Music Humanities Fall 2007, Spring 2008
Membership
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
International Assocation for the Study of Popular Music - US