Sheridan Zahl is a fifth-year PhD candidate in historical musicology whose research interests include the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, aesthetics, nature, and music. Through Deleuze/Guattari’s contentions of what art does, his work explores the potentialities of modern and contemporary music based on/in nature. His dissertation employs Deleuze and Guattari’s joint and individual work to provide a framework in order to understand the goals of artists and ecomusicologists from the 1970s onward, particularly their goals of understanding of subjectivity as a relational and constructive process that exists in deep relationship with one’s environment.

Sheridan has presented work at various conferences and his scholarship has been nominated for a number of awards. He earned an MM from the Eastman School of Music in classical guitar performance before enrolling in the musicology PhD program. Currently, he assists and teaches music history courses at the Eastman School of Music and the Eastman Community Music School in addition to serving as the president of the Graduate Musicology Association. He loves bicycles.