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The Graduate Program in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University
About the PhD Program in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University
Attention Prospective Graduate Program Applicants: -- Please read our "Frequently Asked Questions" page for a detailed description of the structure and mission of our graduate program, including our application process and our fellowship offers. Please do not call or email before reading the FAQs.
The deadline for applications for the following academic year is usually in December, but can be as late as early January. This date is set by GSAS and is NOT flexible! Please make sure you check this year's deadline on the GSAS application page. ALL applications are processed online by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. No materials should be sent directly to the Music Department or to any faculty member. Please contact the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for deadlines and admissions procedures.
Note: We do not offer a part-time enrollment option, a distance learning program, an MA-only option, or enrollment at mid-year.
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Degrees Offered: M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D.in Musicology/ Ethnomusicology affiliated with the Department of Music. at Columbia University. Note that we do not offer an "M.A.-only" option. All applicants are assumed to be seeking the Ph.D.
Special Resources: The Center for Ethnomusicology incorporates a digital media laboratory, special library collections, the Laura Boulton sound archives and other audio archives of historically important field recordings, and a field research equipment collection. We sponsor regular colloquia, concerts, and conferences featuring important scholars and performers. Other resources are available through the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies, the Columbia Computer Music Center, the Columbia University Music Performance Program, the World Music Ensembles Program, and the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program. Our setting in New York City provides access to one of the richest and most diverse musical scenes in the world.Columbia's library system is one of the largest in the world, and includes many specialized collections of interest to ethnomusicologists. Columbia University maintains specialized centers and programs in East Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, Slavic and Central Asian Studies, American Studies, African Studies, African-American Studies, Asian-American and Latino Studies, Western European Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Gender Studies, and many other fields of study. The University also has one of the top Anthropology Departments in the United States. A formal consortium agreement allows Columbia graduate students to take selected courses at Graduate Center of The City University of New York and New York University for credit. Multi-year fellowship support (described in detail below) is available for approximately three to four entering students per year.
Ethnomusicology Website: http://www.ethnocenter.org
Faculty (See the Faculty Page for more details about other Music Department faculty, faculty in other departments, faculty in the New York-area consortium, post-doctoral fellows, visiting scholars, etc. )
Degrees Offered: M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D.in Musicology/ Ethnomusicology affiliated with the Department of Music. at Columbia University. Note that we do not offer an "M.A.-only" option. All applicants are assumed to be seeking the Ph.D.
Special Resources: The Center for Ethnomusicology incorporates a digital media laboratory, special library collections, the Laura Boulton sound archives and other audio archives of historically important field recordings, and a field research equipment collection. We sponsor regular colloquia, concerts, and conferences featuring important scholars and performers. Other resources are available through the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies, the Columbia Computer Music Center, the Columbia University Music Performance Program, the World Music Ensembles Program, and the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program. Our setting in New York City provides access to one of the richest and most diverse musical scenes in the world.Columbia's library system is one of the largest in the world, and includes many specialized collections of interest to ethnomusicologists. Columbia University maintains specialized centers and programs in East Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, Slavic and Central Asian Studies, American Studies, African Studies, African-American Studies, Asian-American and Latino Studies, Western European Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Gender Studies, and many other fields of study. The University also has one of the top Anthropology Departments in the United States. A formal consortium agreement allows Columbia graduate students to take selected courses at Graduate Center of The City University of New York and New York University for credit. Multi-year fellowship support (described in detail below) is available for approximately three to four entering students per year.
Ethnomusicology Website: http://www.ethnocenter.org
Faculty (See the Faculty Page for more details about other Music Department faculty, faculty in other departments, faculty in the New York-area consortium, post-doctoral fellows, visiting scholars, etc. )
Aaron A. Fox (Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Texas 1995) Associate Professor of Music; Chair, Department of Music. Popular music; working-class cultures; language and music; race, class, and indigeneity; ethnographic theory and method; history of social thought; linguistics; Native American Studies; cultural and intellectual property issues.
Email: aaf19@columbia .edu
Website: http://www.aaronfox.com
Lila Ellen Gray (Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, Duke University 2005) Assistant Professor of Music: performance; gender; ethnographic theory and method; poetics; urban cultural studies; place; singing style; fado; Portugal; Europe.
Email: leg2114@columbia.edu
Ana María Ochoa Gautier (Ph.D., Ethnomusicology and Folklore, Indiana University 1996) Associate Professor of Music; Director, Center for Ethnomusicology: cultural policty, music and armed conflict, intellectual property, history of aurality, Latin American Cultural Studies, music and globalization.
Email: ao2110@columbia.edu
Christopher Washburne (Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, Columbia University, 1999) Associate Professor of Music; Chair, Ethnomusicology Area Committee, 2008-9; Director, Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program. Jazz; Salsa; Latin American and Caribbean musics; music and identity; performance.
Email: cjw5@columbia.edu
Website: http://chriswashburne.com
Program Description: The Graduate Program in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University emhasizes the social scientific tradition within the discipline, and our affiliations with the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, popular culture studies, media studies, history, and sociology.Our emerging focus on modernity, nationalism, indigeneity, cultural rights, new media and technology, social activism, and popular music places our program at the forefront of current developments in the discipline and across the social sciences.We continue to emphasize rigorous, sustained field research as the basis of the discipline's unique contribution to musicology and social thought.Our goal is to train students to pursue careers in original scholarly research and university teaching, and to make major contributions to the advancement of knowledge within the disciplines of ethnomusicology, popular culture studies, and musical anthropology.
The program is small and exceptionally communal.Approximately 12-15 students are in residence at any given time, with another few in the field, and we have produced approximately one or two Ph.D. graduates per year in recent years. In the past five years, graduate student research has been sponsored by the Fulbright Fellowship Program (Hays and IIE), The Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Korea Foundation, The Social Science Research Council (7 fellowship grants since 2001), The National Science Foundation, IREX, The Mellon Foundation (for Summer research grants), The Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education's Foreign Language Area Studies program, among others.We have the premier record among ethnomusicology programs in the United States for external funding of student field research. Recent and current students have worked in Senegal, Kenya, Ukraine, Togo, China, Korea, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mali, Nepal, The Republic of Georgia, New Orleans, the Czech Republic, Panama, Canada, and Argentina. and at numerous sites around the United States. Our students present papers at national meetings on a regular basis, and frequently publish significant articles during their graduate school career.
Columbia graduates work at universities across the country and around the world, including the University of Chicago, Oklahoma University, The University of Tennessee, Evergreen College, Ramapo College, Bowling Green State University, Connecticut College, Ewha University (Korea), The Graduate Center of CUNY, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Bar-Ilan University, and many other institutions.Our recent Ph.D. graduates are have received several prestigious post-doctoral fellowships as well.
The goal of our program is to prepare a small number of students for careers in academic research and teaching; students with primary career interests in performance, the music industry, or public-sector institutions may wish to take that focus into consideration before applying.Applicants should also be aware that we do not offer an M.A.-only option.We admit students with the expectation that they are seeking the Ph.D., and all students in the program are on a Ph.D. track pursuant to satisfactory academic performance.
The graduate program requires three (sometimes four) years of coursework for the Ph.D., including a three-semester foundations seminar sequence (intellectual history, social theory, and contemporary ethnography), a year-long field methods seminar (resulting in a Master's Thesis project based on fieldwork in New York City). We also require at least a year of full-time field research for the dissertation, demonstrated competence in two languages other than English (including an oral exam in a fieldwork language, if applicable), and the completion of a rigorous sequence of exams prior to doctoral candidacy.All students, except those admitted with advanced standing, must complete an M.A. thesis based on substantial field research in New York City (supported by a two-semester sequence of field research seminars). Advanced standing, which exempts a student from one year of coursework and the M.A. thesis requirement, is only granted to students with Master's degrees from peer institutions, and who have completed a substantial ethnographic (fieldwork-based) thesis equivalent to theses written in our program. Advanced standing is granted only on a case-by-case basis, and only after a student is enrolled in the program.
Fellowship Support and Admission Requirements and Procedures: Fellowship support, provided by Columbia University and the Mellon Foundation, includes an annual stipend of approximately $22,000, coverage of all tuition and fees, subsidized housing in university apartment buildings, health insurance, and opportunities for additional funding for summer research, language study, and attendance at scholarly meetings to present original research. Fellowship offers normally extend to five years of support (four years for students with advanced standing), and may be extended beyond that term in some cases. Additional part-time employment opportunities are available in the Center for Ethnomusicology.Students on fellowship are expected to teach or assume other duties after the first year in residence; many students received final-year dissertation fellowships unencumbered by teaching duties as wellWe offer teaching assistantships in some ethnomusicology courses, and in the department's undergraduate core course, "Music Humanities," as well as an assistantship in the Center for Ethnomusicology and two assistantships connected with the student-produced journal Current Musicology. Specific additional support may be available for students from recognized minority groups. Please contact Columbia's Office of Minority Affairs for information.
Please be advised: admission to our program is highly competitive. We make only three or four funded fellowship offers per year, and we see many more qualified applicants than we can admit. Admission and fellowship decisions are based on a student's prior educational record, demonstrated writing ability in English (please submit a substantial writing sample with all applications; non-native speakers of English must submit a TOEFL test score and an English writing sample), GRE scores (General Test only; Music Area exam not required); three letters of recommendation, preferably from faculty members who have directly taught the student and/or supervised the student in an independent research project; and prior experience with musical and cross-cultural research and travel. Relevant foreign language skills are a strong qualification. We seriously consider applicants with undergraduate degrees in all fields, but are especially interested in students with prior training in ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, history, and other social science fields. Most of our students are also musicians, but that is not a requirement for admission to the program. Because many of our top applicants are comparably qualified, a number of other factors come into play when we select an entering class. These are described more fully on the Frequently Asked Questions page. ["FAQ" Page is OFFLINE FOR SUMMER 2008 -- RETURNING SOON AFTER REVISIONS]
Prospective applicants should contact Professor Washburne, the Chair of the Ethnomusicology Area Committee (2008-9) by email as soon as possible in the application cycle, but only after they have read the FAQs page.We encourage (but do not require) prospective applicants to visit our program during the Fall of the year in which they apply to meet our faculty and students, visit our classes and seminars, and view our facilities. We especially encourage applications from women, military veterans, and members of groups which have been historically under-represented in American academia.
The program is small and exceptionally communal.Approximately 12-15 students are in residence at any given time, with another few in the field, and we have produced approximately one or two Ph.D. graduates per year in recent years. In the past five years, graduate student research has been sponsored by the Fulbright Fellowship Program (Hays and IIE), The Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Korea Foundation, The Social Science Research Council (7 fellowship grants since 2001), The National Science Foundation, IREX, The Mellon Foundation (for Summer research grants), The Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education's Foreign Language Area Studies program, among others.We have the premier record among ethnomusicology programs in the United States for external funding of student field research. Recent and current students have worked in Senegal, Kenya, Ukraine, Togo, China, Korea, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mali, Nepal, The Republic of Georgia, New Orleans, the Czech Republic, Panama, Canada, and Argentina. and at numerous sites around the United States. Our students present papers at national meetings on a regular basis, and frequently publish significant articles during their graduate school career.
Columbia graduates work at universities across the country and around the world, including the University of Chicago, Oklahoma University, The University of Tennessee, Evergreen College, Ramapo College, Bowling Green State University, Connecticut College, Ewha University (Korea), The Graduate Center of CUNY, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Bar-Ilan University, and many other institutions.Our recent Ph.D. graduates are have received several prestigious post-doctoral fellowships as well.
The goal of our program is to prepare a small number of students for careers in academic research and teaching; students with primary career interests in performance, the music industry, or public-sector institutions may wish to take that focus into consideration before applying.Applicants should also be aware that we do not offer an M.A.-only option.We admit students with the expectation that they are seeking the Ph.D., and all students in the program are on a Ph.D. track pursuant to satisfactory academic performance.
The graduate program requires three (sometimes four) years of coursework for the Ph.D., including a three-semester foundations seminar sequence (intellectual history, social theory, and contemporary ethnography), a year-long field methods seminar (resulting in a Master's Thesis project based on fieldwork in New York City). We also require at least a year of full-time field research for the dissertation, demonstrated competence in two languages other than English (including an oral exam in a fieldwork language, if applicable), and the completion of a rigorous sequence of exams prior to doctoral candidacy.All students, except those admitted with advanced standing, must complete an M.A. thesis based on substantial field research in New York City (supported by a two-semester sequence of field research seminars). Advanced standing, which exempts a student from one year of coursework and the M.A. thesis requirement, is only granted to students with Master's degrees from peer institutions, and who have completed a substantial ethnographic (fieldwork-based) thesis equivalent to theses written in our program. Advanced standing is granted only on a case-by-case basis, and only after a student is enrolled in the program.
Fellowship Support and Admission Requirements and Procedures: Fellowship support, provided by Columbia University and the Mellon Foundation, includes an annual stipend of approximately $22,000, coverage of all tuition and fees, subsidized housing in university apartment buildings, health insurance, and opportunities for additional funding for summer research, language study, and attendance at scholarly meetings to present original research. Fellowship offers normally extend to five years of support (four years for students with advanced standing), and may be extended beyond that term in some cases. Additional part-time employment opportunities are available in the Center for Ethnomusicology.Students on fellowship are expected to teach or assume other duties after the first year in residence; many students received final-year dissertation fellowships unencumbered by teaching duties as wellWe offer teaching assistantships in some ethnomusicology courses, and in the department's undergraduate core course, "Music Humanities," as well as an assistantship in the Center for Ethnomusicology and two assistantships connected with the student-produced journal Current Musicology. Specific additional support may be available for students from recognized minority groups. Please contact Columbia's Office of Minority Affairs for information.
Please be advised: admission to our program is highly competitive. We make only three or four funded fellowship offers per year, and we see many more qualified applicants than we can admit. Admission and fellowship decisions are based on a student's prior educational record, demonstrated writing ability in English (please submit a substantial writing sample with all applications; non-native speakers of English must submit a TOEFL test score and an English writing sample), GRE scores (General Test only; Music Area exam not required); three letters of recommendation, preferably from faculty members who have directly taught the student and/or supervised the student in an independent research project; and prior experience with musical and cross-cultural research and travel. Relevant foreign language skills are a strong qualification. We seriously consider applicants with undergraduate degrees in all fields, but are especially interested in students with prior training in ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, history, and other social science fields. Most of our students are also musicians, but that is not a requirement for admission to the program. Because many of our top applicants are comparably qualified, a number of other factors come into play when we select an entering class. These are described more fully on the Frequently Asked Questions page. ["FAQ" Page is OFFLINE FOR SUMMER 2008 -- RETURNING SOON AFTER REVISIONS]
Prospective applicants should contact Professor Washburne, the Chair of the Ethnomusicology Area Committee (2008-9) by email as soon as possible in the application cycle, but only after they have read the FAQs page.We encourage (but do not require) prospective applicants to visit our program during the Fall of the year in which they apply to meet our faculty and students, visit our classes and seminars, and view our facilities. We especially encourage applications from women, military veterans, and members of groups which have been historically under-represented in American academia.
Click here for a list of biographical descriptions of some of our current students.
Click here for database of dissertations completed in the Columbia Music Department through 2001.
Other Online Resources:
Columbia University Directory of Classes
Columbia's Academic Calendar
Columbia University GSAS Financial Aid Office
Columbia University Apartment Housing Office
A Brief History of Ethnomusicology at Columbia: There has been a tradition of ethnomusicological research at Columbia University since the days of George Herzog, who taught here from 1938 to 1948. In the 1920s Herzog, as a student of Erich M. von Hornbostel and Franz Boas, merged European comparative musicology and American anthropology into what is now called ethnomusicology. that is, the study of music as a vital aspect of human culture and social life. Many distinguished scholars in the field of ethnomusicology have been associated with the university, including Bela Bartok and David McAllester (1940s), Curt Sachs and Walter Wiora (1950s), and Laura Boulton, Willard Rhodes and Nicholas England (1960s), prior to the establishment of a formal doctoral program in ethnomusicology and the Center for Ethnomusicology during the year 1965-66. Since then, such scholars as Adelaida Reyes (formerly Reyes-Schramm), Philip Schuyler, Harold Powers, Peter Manuel, Sean Williams, Kay Shelemay, Daniel Ferguson, Steven Feld, John Baily, Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Barbara Hampton, Gage Averill, Ana Maria Ochoa, and Stephen Blum have taught in the program. Our distinguished alumni work in institutions around the US and the world.
For further information: Contact Professor Christopher Washburne, Chair, Ethnomusicology Area Committee (2008-9)
Mail: MC 1825, Columbia University, 2960 Broadway, NY NY 10027
Tel. 212 854 9862
Fax: 212-854-8191
Email: cjw9@columbia.edu
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Further Information Online
Read the "Frequently Asked Questions" Page For Much More Information On Our Graduate Program
Read the "Frequently Asked Questions" Page For Much More Information On Our Graduate Program
View the Music Department's official "Handbook for Graduate Students in Musicology" (including
Ethnomusicology and Music Theory).
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