Job Placements

Though still in their first decade of existence, the doctoral programs in the McIntire Department of Music have already placed Ph.D.s and ABDs in several prestigious faculty and postdoctoral positions at leading universities and schools of music. Read below about our graduate alumni and follow the links to see what they’re doing now.

Shana Goldin-Perschbacher (at Yale): "Sexuality, Listening, and Intimacy:
Gender Transgression in Popular Music, 1993-2008",
Assoc. Prof. Fred Maus, May 18, 2008

Beginning in fall 2008, Shana joined the faculty of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of Music at Yale University as a Lecturer. Shana is a Ph.D. graduate and is a member of the first class of Ph.D. students in Critical and Comparative Studies in Music. Shana completed her dissertation, "Sexuality, Listening, and Intimacy: Gender Transgression in Popular Music, 1993-2008," with the support of a 2007-2008 American Association of University Women American Dissertation Fellowship. Her project explored the gender performances, genre crossing, and reception of the singers Jeff Buckley, Meshell NdegéOcello, Björk, and Antony Hegarty. She has presented at several national and international conferences, including AMS, SEM, IASPM, FTM, and EMP. Her work on Jeff Buckley appears in the collection Oh Boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music (Routledge, 2007). This article won the Zora Neale Hurston Award and Prize for the best graduate student paper on women or gender at the University of Virginia, 2005-2006. Her paper "Meshell NdegéOcello and Black Female Masculinity" won the IASPM US award for best graduate student paper at the national conference in Charlottesville in October 2004. In 2006, Shana was one of 7 Ph.D. candidates at the University to receive the Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and in summer 2007 was the grateful recipient of a UVA Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Acceleration Fellowship. In April 2007 she organized and hosted a Vocality Symposium for scholars to discuss approaches to analyzing the singing voice and learn about studio production of voices in contemporary music.

Before coming to UVA, Shana earned a Bachelor of Musical Arts with high honors in viola performance and English literature from the University of Michigan. While at UVA she designed and taught the courses "Classical Music in Modern American Culture," "Gender and Sexuality in Popular Music," "Introduction to Music Research," and "Musicianship," and taught "Women's Lives in Myth and Reality," "The Mind of the Artist," classical music appreciation, and jazz history. At Yale she teaches undergraduate and graduate seminars including "Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Studies," "Gender and Sexuality in Popular Music," "Gender Transgression," and "Music and Queer Identities."

 

Juraj Kojs (postdoc at Yale): "Cyberactions and Cyberinstruments
via Physical Modeling Synthesis: Extending Musical Realities ",
Prof. Judith Shatin, May 18, 2008

Juraj Kojs' Website

Beginning in July 2008, Juraj joined the faculty of the Department of Music at Yale University as the Postdoctoral Associate in Music Technology and Multimedia Art. Juraj was born (in 1976) and raised in Slovakia. He is a composer, pianist, and educator. He has studied composition with Beth Wiemann, Kristine Burns, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Fredrick Kaufman, Matthew Burtner, and Judith Shatin. His studies in piano began in Slovakia and continued in the US with Alena Komorasova, Peter Cerman, Baycka Voronietsky, Phillip Silver, Kemal Gekic, and Jose Lopez. Mr. Kojs is a Ph.D. graduate in Composition and Music Technologies at the University of Virginia. Juraj' compositions were featured at the International Computer Music Conference 2006 (New Orleans, USA), Sonoimagenes 2006 (Buenos Aires, Argentina), New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference 2006 (Paris, France), Gaudeamus International Music Week 2005 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and Society of Composers Inc. National Conference 2005 (Greensboro, USA). In 2006, Kojs' composition 'Revelations' was awarded the first place prize at Eastman Electroacoustic Composition and Performance Competition. Additionally, his piece 'In Secret' received an honorable mention at the Digital Art Award in Tokyo, Japan.

Juraj has an interest in discovering new acoustic worlds and involving technology in composition processes is reflected in Kojs' music. Juraj Kojs is a founding member of SofIA: Sonorities of Interactive Acoustics and MIAMI: Medialogy Interactive Acoustics and Multimodal Interfaces. These groups specialize in interactive audio-visual performance and research. Recently, SofIA performed at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and MIAMI appeared at Sonic Arts Research Center in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

University of Virginia awarded Juraj Kojs a Dissertation Year Fellowship for the academic year 2006-2007 and the Award for Excellence 2007 in Scholarship in the Humanities & Social Sciences. The funding has enabled him to advance in working on his dissertation, which discusses how virtual instruments by means of physical modeling synthesis facilitate a continuum between physical and virtual realities in music.

While at the University of Maine, Florida International University, and University of Virginia, Kojs has assisted with teaching and taught a number of undergraduate courses. Additionally, as a visiting lecturer in interactive performance and computer sound related classes, Kojs joined the faculty of Medialogy Department at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark during the academic year 2004-2005.

 

Mary Simonson (at Colgate): "Music, Dance, and Female Creativity
in Early Twentieth-Century American Performance ",
Assoc. Prof. Richard Will, May 18, 2008

Mary joined the faculty of Colgate University as a Lecturer in the Women's Studies Program. Mary Simonson was a Presidential Fellow and Ph.D. graduate in Critical and Comparative Studies in Music at the University of Virginia. Originally from New Jersey, Mary has a B.A. in music and women's studies from Rutgers University. Mary's research interests include nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera and dance, feminist theory and women in performances, and issues of vocality and embodiment. She has presented papers on the Salome character in early twentieth century American culture, vocal and corporeal interactions among female characters in Auber's La Muette de Portici, and Anna Pavlova's appearance in Lois Weber's opera-film "The Dumb Girl of Portici"; her work on La Muette was awarded the AMS Capital Chapter's Lowens Award. Mary has taught courses including Basic Musical Skills, Entertainment Yesterday: Stage and Screen at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, and Dance, Music, and Culture; she's also a co-founder of the South Central Graduate Music Consortium, a collaboration between students at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina ­ Chapel Hill, and Duke University Currently, Mary is writing a dissertation entitled Performance, Multimedia, and Creativity in Early Twentieth-Century American Musical Life, which employs turn of the century musical, cinematic, and dance productions to examine female creativity and prestige, and musical meaning more broadly. In her spare time, Mary enjoys exploring her own embodiment through Pilates, in dance classes, and while out running.

 

Peter Swendsen (Oberlin): "Amplified Whispers and the Artifice of Inaction:
for Electroacoustic Music and Interactive Dance ", Prof. Judith Shatin

Peter Swendsen Website at Oberlin

Peter was appointed Assistant Professor in the Technology in Music and Related Arts program at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Swendsen spent 2006-07 working on a soundscape composition project while in residence as a Fulbright Fellow at the NoTAM Computer Music Studios in Oslo, Norway. His dissertation project at UVA is a large- scale composition for electroacoustic music, interactive dance, and extended/prepared piano. Swendsen's music has been called "highly skillful" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and "marvelous" by the San Francisco Chronicle. He received his MFA from the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music and his BM from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. His music has been heard throughout the United States and recently in Canada, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Norway, India, Korea, Chile, Argentina, and as part of a CD release called "Resonance: Steel Pan in the 21st Century." Swendsen has studied composition with Gary Nelson, Richard Povall, Kristine Burns, Gail Wight, Maggi Payne, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Matthew Burtner and Judith Shatin, and is currently creating and performing with electroacoustic music, extended instrumental techniques, interactive environments, dance, installation, and video. He also serves as Assistant Editor for Journal SEAMUS. Swendsen is the co-artistic director of Prospect Dance Group and works extensively in collaboration with choreographers.