Musicologist, John C. Neville Distinguished Professor at North Carolina Central University
Unbinding Gentility
My latest book is Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South (University of Illinois Press, April 2021).
Other publications
Charleston Belles Abroad: The Music Collections of Harriet Lowndes, Henrietta Aiken, and Louisa Rebecca McCord (University of South Carolina Press, 2019) https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2018/7956.html
Indiana University Press
About me
I am a native North Carolinian and currently live on my ancestral farm in a rural area in the Coastal Plains region. My undergraduate degree (BM) is in Piano Performance and my AM and PhD are in Musicology. I have been away from this page for a while, but I hope to be more diligent in keeping it up to date!
Forthcoming
Edmond Dédé: Morgiane, ou le Sultane d’Ispahan, Cambridge New Music Handbooks. In the publication process with Cambridge University Press, anticipated in 2027.
Recent publications
2026 (thus far): “Rosalie Pacquot Boyer: Pedagogue and Salonnière in Antebellum New Orleans,” A History of Women and Salons, ed. by Rebecca Cypess and Jacqueline Avila (Indiana University Press, 2026).
Forthcoming: “Chopin as Signifier of Social Change in the Southern United States” – in annual Chopin Institute publication, Warsaw (in process, Chopin Institute, 2026)
“Bound Music as a lieu de mémoire in Charleston, South Carolina” in Albuming Beyond Borders: Music, Memory, Material Culture, ed. by Halina Goldberg and Henrike Rost (Oxford University Press, under contract, 2026).
“Women, Binder’s Volumes, and The Reception of Foster’s Music in Pittsburgh,” in Foster at 200, ed. by Jason Guthrie and Jennie Lightweis-Goff (Palgrave Macmillan, submitted)
““Seen and Unseen at the Piano: Immigrant Women Teachers and Their Impact on Musical Practices in the French Quarter,” in In a New Key: Studies of Women at the Piano, ed. by Natasha Loges and Joe Davies (Oxford University Press, in publication, 2026).
“The Composer’s Black Identity on the Operatic Stage: Edmond Dédé and Morgiane,” in Black Identities on the Operatic Stage, ed. by Naomi André, Kristen Turner, and Elizabeth Keathley (submitted to Oxford University Press, under contract, forthcoming).
“La Violette and a French Salon Ideal in Antebellum New Orleans,” in Cultural and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Salon, ed. by Anja Bunzel and Nancy November (Oxford University Press, in publication process).
2025: “Social Networks among Musicians of Color in Antebellum New Orleans,” (Wahl) Verwandschaften, ed. by Christine Fornoff-Petrowski, et al (Böhlau Verlag in the series Musik – Kultur – Gender, 2025).
“Music and Musicians in the French Quarter: The Cultural Geography of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans,” in Music Across the Ocean, ed. by Melanie Unseldt, Carola Bebermeier, and Clemens Kreuzfeldt (Vernetzen – Bewegen – Verorten. Kultuwissenschaftliche Perspektiven).
2023: “Opera, Lieder, or Stephen Foster?: Popular Song in the Antebellum US South,” in Popular Song in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Derek Scott. Centro Studi Omnia Luigi Boccherini.
“’She takes up music as a profession’: Women Organists in Reconstruction Mobile, Alabama,” in Hidden Narratives of Women and Music, ed. Paula Bishop and Kendra Preston Leonard.
Recent talks
2026: “Understanding Musicking withing the Concept of Placiality,” Universtät für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna, Austria
“Musical Genius, Women, and the Transmission of Musical Knowledge in Regency Britain: 2026 Evidence from The Ouseley Family and the Tenbury Collection,” Public lecture, Oxford University
“Understanding Musicking within the Concept of Placiality,” FMG, Hochschule, Hannover, Germany
Faculty Member, “Music at Home: Music Making, Cultural Exchange, and Knowledge Transfer in the Domestic Space,” Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender, HfM, Hannover, Germany [March, Spring School]
“A US-American Identity, but Not for All: Edmond Dédé,” Forging an American Musical Identity, New York City
“Black New Orleans Confronts White France: Edmond Dédé’s Signifiers of Exoticism,” Society for American Music, Richmond
2025: “Chopin as Signifier of Social Change in the Southern United States,” Keynote at annual Chopin Conference, Chopin Institute, Warsaw, Poland
“Children Teaching Children: Musicking in the Ouseley Family in the 1820s,” Children’s Music in the Nineteenth Century, Loverre, Italy
“An Opera Trying to Say it All: Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane (1887),” UNC (Sept. 2025) and NCCU (Feb. 2026)
“Dispelling Racial Othering Through Opera: Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane (1887),” American Musicological Society National Meeting, Minneapolis
Pre-Concert Lectures and Colloquia for performances of Morgiane by Opera Lafayette and Opera Creole, January (New Orleans), February (Washington, DC, New York, and University of Maryland)
“Bound Music as a lieu de mémoire in Charleston, SC,” Royal Irish Academy of Music
2024: “Placing New Orleans: A Latin City in the 19th-Century United States,” VI Congreso de la Asociación Regional para América Latina y el Caribe de la Sociedad Internacional de Musicología, la Facultad de Música de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
2023: “Music and Race in the Archives,” Reed College
“Women Pianists at the Intersection of Postcolonialism and Performativity in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans,” Women at the Piano International Conference, UC Irvine
“La Violette and the Idea of the French Salon in Antebellum New Orleans,” American Musicological Society Annual Meeting, New Orleans; Society for American Music, Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN
2022: “Women of Color and Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: Mercedes Duhart and Adrinette Bazanac,” Louisiana State University (also at NCCU, 2024)
“Social Networks among Francophone Musicians in Mid-19th-Century New Orleans,” Florida State University
“Music and Musicians in the French Quarter: Parisian Musical Culture in Antebellum New Orleans,” Processes of Cultural Exchange in a Transatlantic Space, 1800-1850,” Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna, Austria
2022: “La Violette and the Idea of the French Salon in Antebellum New Orleans,” Music-Cultural Exchange and the Nineteenth-Century Salon, Prague, Czech Republic
“Women of Color and Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: Mercedes Duhart and Adrinette Bazanac,” Affinities: Collaborative Cultural Action, HMTM Hannover, Germany
“Imaging Black Gentility,” Catholic University, Washington, DC
“A Jenny Lind Songbook,” Appalachian State University
Contact:
Current projects
Women and Creativity, 1800-1840, looking specifically in Britain but expanding across Europe
Musicking in the Ouseley family, 1810-1850 (London. Gloucestershire, Worcestershire)
The music collection of Adèle Guichard Chaudot
NEH funded project to catalogue and locate binder’s volumes in the US, with Maristella Feustle and Brian Anderson, 2023-25
Looking South – collaborations with scholars of women music in the Caribbean, Central and South Americas
Decolonizing Cross-cultural Exchange in the Musical Practices of Nineteenth-century New Orleans and Santiago de Chile
Women as Collectors in the United States – A Collection of Microhistories
