Current Musicology Students
Bronwen McVeigh
STUDENT PROFILE
Bronwen McVeigh holds an MS in Medical Humanities and Bioethics from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry where she was honored as the “most exceptional” master’s degree candidate at URMC. Additionally, she earned a BM in piano performance and composition at Michigan State University where she was named the university’s “most outstanding graduating senior.” While at MSU, Bronwen received funding from the Presser foundation to study contemporary trends in poetry and music in Northern Italy. She also won the Louis B. Sudler Prize in the Arts, the Mary Anderson Award for Best Paper on Gender and Global Perspective, and the Featherstone Endowed Prize, among others.
Bronwen’s research interests are broad, ranging from the curiously popular phenomenon of medical roleplay ASMR, the subject of her master’s thesis, to the intersections of song, sound, and sickness in Philip Roth’s final novel Nemesis (article currently under review.) Moreover, Bronwen is part of a research team that is exploring how participating in drum circles may ameliorate the negative cognitive effects of chemotherapy.
In her dissertation, Bronwen studies the various ways in which auditory aspects of violence—from gratingly loud gunshots to the sinister silence of state-enforced curfews—exacerbated suffering for Occupied Parisians during the second World War. She argues that the soundscape of Paris during Occupation was not only depressing and unfamiliar, but traumatic, as sound played a profound role in demoralizing and disciplining the population, and even in causing physical pain.
An active composer and artist, Bronwen has embarked on many projects including a musical collaboration with the poet Anita Skeen. Currently, she is working on an art instillation about deadly historical makeup trends. Most importantly, though, Bronwen makes exceptional pesto.