EDUCATION

Ph.D., Music

The Graduate Center

City University of New York

Defense Date: September 14, 2017

Dissertation: “Musicking, Discourse, and Identity in Participatory Media Fan Cultures”

Advisor: Emily Wilbourne

Committee: Elizabeth L. Wollman, Anne Stone, and Sally Childs-Helton

Since the effective launch of fan studies in the late 1980s, a significant amount of research has been dedicated to the study of fan creativity, with much of the literature focusing on fiction, videos and cosplay. Comparatively little has been written on fan-created music, even while social media and other internet technologies have considerably transformed fandom’s musical landscape. Although a small number of scholars have written about filk (briefly, the folk music produced by science fiction/fantasy fans) and wizard rock (Harry Potter-inspired rock), most of these pieces present musical communities within media fandom as utopic spaces. In this dissertation, I investigate three forms of music-making within media fandom and their respective communities: filk, wizard rock, and the YouTube musicals of Team StarKid and AVbyte. I consider their individual histories and the popular music movements and genres that influenced their respective developments. Even though the practices of these three communities are very different, their participants use similar, if identical, discourses when discussing what they do and why they do it: openness, acceptance, the equality of all participants (and by extension, the lack of hierarchy), and the celebration of amateurism. The rhetoric itself is nothing new and is found throughout media fandom, in creative and non-creative sectors. However, unlike the communities surrounding fan fiction and fan video that, today, exist primarily online, the rhetoric in these musical communities is attached to performance and social practices, as well as in-person and online interactions. In addition to providing the first academic histories for these communities, I analyze the ways in which participants’ behaviors align with—and contradict—the rhetoric. This is to demonstrate that the rhetoric’s purpose is not merely descriptive, but more often, imaginative and teleological.

M.Phil., Music

The Graduate Center

City University of New York

February 2014

M.A., Music

The Graduate Center

City University of New York,

September 2013

B.Mus. with Honors, Flute Performance

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Flute Professor: Brooks de Wetter-Smith

Senior Honors Thesis: “Hearing a New Heartbeat: Taiko, Gender and Ethnic Identity”

Honors Thesis Advisor: David Garcia

May 2008