Alumni

Musicology

Michael Accinno (MA) is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Riverside. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 2016, where he completed a dissertation entitled “Gestures of Inclusion: Blindness, Music, and Pedagogy in Nineteenth-Century Thought.”

Yu Jueng Choi Dahn (MA) is a student in the PhD program at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.  She has presented papers at chapters of the American Musicological Society and published articles and reviews in the Music Research Forum, the Journal of Musicological Research, and elsewhere.

Jennifer Dunlap (MA) received the MLIS degree from Dominican University.  She is a Project Cataloging Assistant at the Newberry Library in Chicago, working with Howard Mayer Brown’s Libretto Collection and the French Pamphlet Collection.

Leslie Finer (PhD) is the director of Arts Share, the University of Iowa’s arts outreach program, which offers interactive performances, workshops, readings, residencies, master classes, and recitals to schools and communities around Iowa.

Heather Foote (MA) is a Manager at Vocational Services Unlimited in the Cleveland area.

Stevie Garza-Otto (MA) is Academic Affairs Assistant and Advisor at the School of Music of George Mason University.

Kyle Gassiot (MA), is the Operations Manager, a Host, and a Reporter at Troy Public Radio in Montgomery/Troy, Alabama. He is an editor for Bass World and a host for the podcast, Speak Low, of the International Double Bass Society.

Stephen Husarik (PhD) appeared at the Society of Music Theory Conference in Berlin in 2015 to speak about a new approach to Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge.  A portion of his paper is published in The Music Times and another portion is scheduled for publication in Speculum Musicae.  Husarik is Professor of Music and Humanities at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith, where he serves as Head Carillonneur.  He is the editor of Interdisciplinary Humanities.

Megan Jenkins (MA) received her PhD in musicology from the City University of New York.  Her dissertation was entitled, “Madness, Sexuality, and Gender in Early Twentieth Century Music Theater Works: Four Interpretive Essays.”

Jessica Kizzire (PhD) has worked as an instructor at Greenville University and currently teaches at the University of New Haven. She is the author of “‘The Place I’ll Return to Someday’: Musical Nostalgia in Final Fantasy IX,” published in Music in Video Games: Studying Play (Routledge, 2014).

Lori Kruckenberg (PhD) is Associate Professor at the University of Oregon.  Among her numerous international publications on medieval music are an article in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and an edited volume, The Sequences of Nidaros: A Nordic Repertory and Its European Context.  Her chapter on the liturgical sequence will appear in The Cambridge History of Medieval Music.

Katheryn (Kery) Lawson (MA) completed an MA in Librarian and Information Science at Iowa in 2017 and is pursuing a PhD in History at the University of Delaware. Her research for her musicology thesis was adapted for the article, “Girl Scout Contrafacta and Symbolic Soldiering in the Great War,” published in American Music 35, no. 3 (2017). She also contributed a chapter to Childhood and Pethood in Literature and Culture: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies and Animal Studies (Routledge, 2017).

Joseph Matson (MA) did his doctoral coursework at the University of Minnesota and is currently writing his dissertation on intertexuality in American popular song after 1970.  He teaches part-time at Illinois State University and Millikin University.  His publications have appeared in the Grove Dictionary of American Music, Notes, and Musicians and Composers of the 20th Century.

Nikki Malley (PhD) is Associate Professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. She has published about American auctioneering as an improvisatory art form in the Journal of the American Music Society and presented her research at the Society for Ethnomusicology and Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conferences.

Greg Newbold (MA) graduated in Spring 2017.

Katherine Ramsey (MA) is a Research and Instructional Librarian for Music, the Arts, and the Performing Arts at the University of Alabama.

Graham Raulerson (MA) is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles and is a adjunct lecturer at Glendale Community College. He will present a paper, “One More Ticket to Ride: Hobo Recording Artists and the Hobo Renaissance” at the 2013 meeting of the American Musicological Society.

Kimberly Beck Seder (MA) is a student in the PhD program at the University of British Columbia.  She spent the 2012-2013 academic year in Salzburg, Austria, working on research for her dissertation in the Archive of the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Salzburg Government Archives on a Fulbright fellowship.

Jama Stilwell (PhD) is Associate Professor at Cornell College.  In 2011 her article in Music & Letters, “A New View of the Eighteenth-Century ‘Abduction’ Opera: Edification and Escape at the Parisian Théâtres de la Foire,” won the American Musicological Society’s Alfred Einstein award for an article of exceptional merit by a scholar in her early career stages.

Music Theory

James Bungert (MA) is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Music History at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. His article “Bach and the Patterns of Transformation” appears in Music Theory Spectrum (fall 2015, 37/2).

Carla Colletti (PhD) is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Bachelor of Arts in Music program at Webster University.  She has authored a chapter in the book, Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy.

Sarah Culpepper (MA) was accepted into the graduate program in music theory at Yale University.

Matthew Custer (MA) lives and works in Florida, where he is pursuing additional education in a pre-medicine track.

Patrick Fitzgibbon is currently in the doctoral program in music theory at the University of Chicago.

Kati Myer (PhD) is a Visiting Instructor at Morningside College.

Irna Priore (PhD) was an Associate Professor of music theory at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She passed away after a long illness in spring 2014, and is greatly missed by family, friends, colleagues, and students. Her publications have appeared in Theoria, the Yearbook of the Deutsches Volksliedarchiv Freiburg, and the book, Berio’s Sequenzas.

Erin Rich (MA) is teaching first grade at Mountainview Elementary.

James Skretta is currently in the doctoral program in music theory at the University of Chicago.

Composition

John Allemeier (PhD) is Professor of Composition at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Yousif Bilal (MA) is an Assistant Professor of Arabic at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute, where he teaches advanced Arabic through song.

Ryan Cole (MA) is living and working in Texas.

Justin Comer (MA) is living and working in the Iowa City area.

Seth Custer (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at Bob Jones University.

Luke Dahn (PhD) is an Associate Professor at Northwestern College in Orange City, IA.

Joseph Dangerfield  (PhD) is Visiting Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. He was previously an Associate Professor at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Tim Davis (PhD) currently works at the Education Development Center, Inc and founder of the Boston New Music Initiative. http://www.tadavis.org/

David DeVasto (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at Elmhurst College.

Tony Donofrio (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, where he teaches composition and theory and coordinates the new music festival. Anthony was previously Adjunct Professor at Kent State University. http://www.donofrio-music.com/

Matthew Dotson (PhD) is a private guitar instructor in Illinois. https://www.elance.com/s/matthewdotson/resume/

Zachary Fischer (PhD) is living and working in Maryland.

Rachel Foote (MFA) is an ensign in the US Coast Guard and Concert Reviews Editor of Journal SEAMUS.

Daniel Frantz (MA) lives and works in the Iowa City area.

Christopher Gainey (PhD) is currently re-enrolled and fully funded in the music theory PhD program at the University of British Columbia. Currently ABD.

Erin Gee (MA) earned the PhD at the University of Graz, Austria. She received the Rome Prize in Composition, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She has been recently profiled by The New Yorker, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. She is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Jason Gregory (MA)

John Griffin (PhD) is a lecturer at Western Michigan University.

Anne Guthrie (BA) is a PhD student in Architectural Acoustics at the Renneslauer Institute of Technology.

Shane Hoose (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Music, with a focus on music technology and recording arts, at Eastern Kentucky University.

Ching-chu Hu (MA) received the DMA degree from the University of Michigan and is Professor of Composition at Denison University (Ohio).

Will Huff (PhD) is living, working, and teaching in the Chicago area. http://www.huffcomposer.com

George Hufnagl (MA) currently works in sound design for children’s books (http://pilbooks.com/) and video games (My Escape) and lives in Chicago.

Thomas Judson (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at Winston Salem State University.  http://tohmjudson.com/

Minpyo Kim (PhD) is currently a lecturer at Busan National University, Korea Baptist Theological University, and Mokwon University.

Shinjung Kim (PhD) currently teaches in South Korea.

Aaron Kirschner (BM) is currently enrolled in the MA composition degree at the University of Utah.

Evan Kuchar (MA) is currently living in Chicago, and works as a web developer for Granicus and Polymathic.

David Maki (MA) received the DMA degree from the University of Michigan and is Professor of Composition at Northern Illinois University.

George Marie (MA) received the PhD degree in composition from the University of Utah.

Lieschen Mast (MA) is currently a private piano teacher. http://mastpianostudio.com/

Israel Neuman (PhD) is currently re-enrolled in a Masters of Computer Science degree at the University of Iowa.

Stas Omelchenko (PhD) is currently an adjunct professor of music theory, composition, and electronic music at the University of Tampa and serves on the piano faculty at Patel Conservatory of Music at David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts.

Jason Palamara (PhD) successfully defended his dissertation in Spring 2015.

Dimitri Papageorgiou (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Composition at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Brian Penkrot (PhD) teaches at Columbia College and Roosevelt University, both in the Chicago area. http://www.brianpenkrot.com/index.html

Aaron Perrine (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, where he teaches courses in music theory, education, and composition. He is the 2013 winner of the prestigious Sousa-Ostwald prize from the American Bandmasters Association for his 2013 wind ensemble composition Pale Blue On Deep. He is the previous winner of the Outstanding TA award from the University of Iowa. http://aaronperrine.com

Jean-Paul Perrotte (PhD) is currently a lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches composition, electronic music, and is coordinator of the music theory program. http://www.jeanpaulperrotte.com/

Stephanie Pieczynski (MA) is currently enrolled in the DMA in composition at Florida State University.

Daniel Roeder (MA) is a private music teacher in California.  http://www.dan.the-roeders.com/

Barry Sharp (MA) is enrolled in the doctoral program in music composition at Cornell University.

Scott Shoemaker (PhD) received the J.D. degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Christopher Shortway (PhD) has taught at the University of Northern Iowa and owns Shortway Sounds, a company that provides floor music for dancers, choreographers, and gymnasts. http://www.shortwaysounds.com/about/

Katerina Stamatelos (PhD) currently lives and teaches privately in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Andrew Struck-Marcell (BM) is currently finishing his PhD in Composition at New York University.

Brian Vlasak (PhD) is currently re-enrolled at the University of Iowa in the Writing Center, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. (http://www.uiowa.edu/~writingc/)

Zach Zubow (PhD) is currently a lecturer at Coe College and Grinnell College.