After completing the bulk of their coursework, PhD students spend two semesters defining their field of expertise and preparing a dissertation prospectus, which they defend in the Special Field Exam at the end of the third year. Recent dissertations include:
Varied Topics
- “Sounding Socialist, Sounding Modern: Music, Technology, and Everyday Life in the Soviet Union, 1956-1975”
- “Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers and the Rhetoric of French Catholic Reform”
- “City Myths: Music and Urbanism in Second-Empire Paris”
- “Reviving Early Music: Metaphors and Modalities of Life and Living in Historically Informed Performance”
- “Bringing Down the House: Situating and Mediating Opera in the Twenty-First Century”
- “Beyond Beyoncé: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary American Hip-Hop ca. 2010-2016”
- “Technologies of Singing, Teaching, and Spectating in French Operatic Culture, 1870-1914”
- “Transforming the Motet: Sigmund Salminger and the Adaptation and Reuse of Frenco-Flemish Polyphony in Reformation Augsburg”