Biography
My research focuses on intersections of music, literature, and philosophy across more than seven languages from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries. My dissertation, Aesthetics of Community: Music, Poetry, and Social Form in the Long Nineteenth Century, develops a nonrepresentational Marxist aesthetics through study of neglected passages in Marx’s early philosophical writings, arguing that aesthetic form can actively transform human experience rather than merely represent social realities. Through analysis of music and lyric poetry of the long nineteenth century, the project shows how radical acts of expression can open new possibilities for social existence and community formation. It integrates debates on musical meaning, neo-Riemannian theory, sound studies, and philosophy to argue for how musical and lyric form play an active role in the emergence and reproduction of society. Case studies focus on parataxis and polyphony as responses to revolutionary social change (Beethoven and Hölderlin); cyclicity and apostrophe as encounters with alterity (Schumann and Keats); phrasal and syntactical dissolution as models for nonhierarchical community (Liszt and Mallarmé); and epic form as a basis for envisioning pluralistic collectivity (Mahler and Crane).
During my time at Yale, I have also undertaken work toward a second book project. Provisionally entitled Rhythms of Liberation: Transcultural Music-Making in the Age of Globalization, this project analyzes postwar musicians who blend Classical forms, styles, and instruments with a variety of folk, protest, and art music traditions to critique authoritarian nationalism and globalist hegemony. Beginning with Luigi Nono’s synthesis of labor protests through tape and live electronic technologies as both resistance to Italian fascism and critique of Darmstadt serialism, the remaining chapters detail examples ranging from Chilean and Argentinian nueva canción to East Asian avant-garde composition and film scoring, with an emphasis on how musical form becomes a site to contest political questions of social and national identity. Expanding the framework of Aesthetics of Community beyond the West and into the twentieth century, this project draws further on media and sound studies to identify disruptive sonic technologies as the medium and means for radical, transcultural musical praxis.
I hold an AB in Comparative Literature and Piano Performance Certificate at Princeton (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), an MPhil in Modern Languages at Oxford (distinction), and a Graduate Certificate in Piano Performance from the University of South Carolina. My research has been supported by the A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship, the Franke Fellowship, the Charles Kao Fund, and a Field Research Grant from the Council on East Asian Studies. My scholarship has appeared in a variety of major journal publications, including Comparative Literature, MLN, and New German Critique, among others. Outside my academic work, I maintain an active career as a concertizing pianist. I regularly perform solo recitals in the US and abroad, and I was recently named pianist and artistic director of the Upton Trio. I competed in the Maria Canals and Livorno Competitions, was a semifinalist for the Premio Città di Imola, and won a Silver Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition as a member of the Trio Adonais.