University of California, Los Angeles

Faculty Member, Musicology

Assistant Professor

About

I am an Assistant Professor in the Musicology Department of the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA.  I am a medievalist, and my research primarily concerns secular song and the manuscripts that transmit them, particularly in the later middle ages, the 14th and early 15th centuries.  I teach classes on medieval music, including liturgical music, from the earliest recorded chant through the fifteenth century.

My secondary research interest is medievalism, that is, the discovery, interpretation and recreation of medieval material in post-medieval periods.  I teach a GE class at UCLA called "Getting Medieval:  Medievalism in Music and Popular Culture" that covers a variety of medievalist encounters with music including Wagner's Ring operas, J.R.R. Tolkien (and Howard Shore's music for Peter Jackson's films of The Lord of the Rings), the representation of the middle ages in Hollywood films, various Folk music and Early Music revivals, pop music from the 1960s and 1970s, and the translation of medievalist musical tropes into video game music.

I am writing a book about songs from the late 14th and early 15th centuries, specifically works by Guillaume Dufay, and various kinds of historical evidence, heretofore undiscovered, that these songs provide.