Musicologist researching
the British colonial Caribbean
Maria Ryan | B.A. Hons., M.Mus., Ph.D.
EDUCATION
University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. in musicology, 2021
Graduate Certificate in Africana Studies
Center for Teaching and Learning Teaching Certificate
Dissertation title: “Hearing Power, Sounding Freedom: Black Practices of Listening, Music-making, and Ear-training in the British Colonial Caribbean”
Committee: Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. (Chair), Heather Williams, Glenda Goodman
King's College London, M.Mus., musicology, 2014
University of Nottingham, B.A. Hons, music, 2010
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Music in the colonial Caribbean, Black Feminist Theory, Music and Slavery,
Book and Archival History, Critical Bibliography, African American Intellectual History
TEACHING INTERESTS
Eighteenth-century music, Music in America, Music and Race, Slavery in America, Atlantic Studies, Afro American classical music, Critical Bibliography, 20th- and 21st-century Opera
PUBLICATIONS
"'The influence of Melody upon man in the wild state of nature': Enslaved Parishioners Anglican Violence, and Racialized Listening in a Jamaica Parish." Forthcoming [Summer 2021] The Journal of the Society of American Music.
“Angels in the Archive: Animating the Past in Written on Skin.” In Recomposing the Past: Early Music on Stage and Screen, edited by James Cook, Alexander Kolassa and Adam Whittaker, 174–187. London: Routledge, 2018.
NATIONALLY COMPETITIVE GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS
2020–2022 Andrew W. Mellon Junior Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at University of Virginia Rare Book School
2020–2021 American Musicological Society Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship
2020–2021 ACLS-Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship
2019–2020 Margery Morgan Lowens Dissertation Fellowship, Society for American Music
2019 Andrew W. Mellon Short-term Fellowship, Program in African American History, Library Company of Philadelphia
2018 Ora Frishberg Saloman Travel Grant, American Musicological Society
2018 Michael Kraus Research Grant in American Colonial History, American Historical Association
2015 London Arts and Humanities Partnership Research Studentship (declined), Arts and Humanities Research Council
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2020 “Familiar Strangers: Enslaved Black Women’s Listening Practices and the Afterlives of Slavery in Musical Thought,” American Musicology Society Annual Conference.
2020 “‘Simple Psalmody’ or ‘Laboured Compositions’?: The Politics of Racialized Listening in St. Ann, Jamaica,” North American British Music Studies Association 2020 Biennial Conference [virtual conference due to COVID-19]
2020 “Overhearing on the Plantation,” Society for American Music Annual Conference, [virtual conference due to COVID-19]
2020 “‘…Paper which had once been white’: Interacting Invitation Practices in Colonial Antigua,” American Contact: Intercultural Exchange and the History of the Book [virtual conference due to COVID-19]
2020 “Black Fiddlers in the British Colonial Caribbean.” Invited “Brown Bag” lunch workshop, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
2019 “‘The influence of Melody upon man in the wild state of nature’: Music, Violence, and Race in a Jamaica Parish, 1827–28,” Early American Music and the Construction of Race, University of Pennsylvania
2019 “Dancing for Themselves: Centering Black Experiences of Military Music in the British Colonial Caribbean,” Atlantic Crossings: Music From 1492 Through the Long 18th Century, Boston University
2018 “Performing and Hearing Race in Post-emancipation Antigua,” North American British Music Studies Association 2018 Biennial Conference, Logan, Utah
2018 “‘Our people, I fear, are drifting too far away from the classics…’: Singing Race, Class, and Gender in Philadelphia 1912–1914,” Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the American Musicological Society, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia
2018 “Decolonizing the Music Survey: A Manifesto for Action” with David Chavannes, Temple University Theory, History, and Ethnomusicology Society (THEMUS), Philadelphia
2016 “Engraved Music as Image and Engraved Image as Music: the Possibility of Silent Audibility in Calliope,” Confluences, Connections and Correspondences: Music and Visual Culture Conference, University of Toronto
2015 “Hearing the Presentness of the Past in Written on Skin,” Representations of Music on Stage and Screen Study Day, University of Nottingham
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2014–2015 Executive Assistant, Culture at King’s, King’s College London
2012–2014 Music Assistant, Westminster Abbey, London
2010–2012 Music Assistant, Lakeside Arts Centre, University of Nottingham
MEMBERSHIPS
American Musicological Society
North American British Music Studies Association
Society for American Music
