In the early 2000s, a new genre of music broke into the mainstream and begandominating popular music charts. The fans called it emo, and it became known as the latest iteration of the emo genre from the ’80s and ’90s. In this thesis, I explore the relationship between fans and emo music, clarifying the genre’s variety of definitions and interpretations while also identifying the types of discourse and the “productive” fandom practices in which fans participate in online emo community. I consider how early online fandom communities were formed and examine various online emo communities as digital archives containing emo discourse, emo fan fiction, and fan-written music reviews. Analyzing such archived materials from internet sites such as Pinterest, Tumblr, and LiveJournal is an important next step in emo fandom studies because these digital archives reveal significant areas of discourse within emo communities ranging from terminology and genre classification to modes of participatory fandom like fan fiction to conversations about mental health. I consider these topics from all sides, balancing fan testimonies with media narratives and scholarly commentary. By focusing on the mental health crisis in online emo fandom, the fan content that emo fandom inspires, and different approaches to defining the genre of emo, this thesis contributes to the study of a unique musical subculture that shaped the lives of a generation of teenagers. It will also illuminate the essential role that the internet plays in the formation of subcultures and teen identities by exploring the past and present existence of this online fandom.

This project features three new pieces for oboe commissioned from three different composers. Each piece explores styles and/or instrumentations that are less common in the current body of repertoire. These pieces are Scenes for Charlie by Bryan Kennard, Love’s Last Gift by Thomas Juneau, and But Joy Comes in the Morning by William Brusick. A performance guide has been included for each piece, providing tips and suggestions for musicians wanting to perform these pieces in the future. In addition to the performance guide, each composer answered a list of interview questions to provide background information and give insight into their compositional process. Accompanying this document are recordings performed by the author.

This thesis examines the role of advocacy and social justice in the music of three living American women composers, and the ways their efforts as mentors, patrons, academics, and educators interact with their work as composers. Case studies include Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972), Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980), and Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981). My musicological narrative is informed by Kimberly Francis’s concept of women as “cultural mosaics” and Patricia Hill Collins’s theorization of intersectionality, which addresses the junction of variable characteristics (such as race, gender, or class) as they relate to an individual’s identity. I have centered my narrative on social issues these composers address through their activism and their music. Gabriela Lena Frank’s orchestral work, Peregrinos (2009), emphasizes Frank’s value of community outreach and her interdependence on others. Frank uses folklórica traditions and Latin mythology to musically recognize the diverse experiences of Latin American immigrants living in Indianapolis. Missy Mazzoli blends operatic traditions with electronics to convey messages of female empowerment in Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt (2012). Mazzoli’s characterization of the fascinating life of this nineteenth-century woman resonates with modern understandings of intersectionality and agency, and aligns with her work with the Luna Composition Lab. Jennifer Jolley’s approach to musical activism in Prisoner of Conscience (2017) mirrors her philosophical and political messages explored on her blog and e-magazine articles. Juxtaposing punk rock with church motets and madrigals, Jolley comments on the nature of protest and the punishment of Russian feminist punk group, Pussy Riot. I position these composers as cultural agents with diverse concerns and diverse means by which to voice them. Frank, Mazzoli, and Jolley each participate in valuable extra-musical roles outside of their compositions: from Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy of Music, to Mazzoli’s Luna Composition Lab, to Jolley’s NewMusicBox articles. Each of these composers negotiate agency within traditions that have not always been open to women, and they seek to further remedy race and gender inequities through their prominent positions as educators and composers.

Mental health of children has been a topic of concern in recent years, and was brought to the forefront again in 2020 due to exacerbated stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the amount of time children spend in school, the effects of their emotional stress and mental health challenges are seen by their teachers. Studies have shown that teachers often have high levels of concern about student mental health, but also do not feel as though they have enough resources and guidance from their schools to be able to support the mental health of the students in their classrooms on a daily basis. Research also shows that music is an effective tool for addressing children’s mental health and bolstering their mindfulness. The goal of this study was to better understand whether or not a subset of elementary school music teachers use music to help students who are feeling anxiety, stress, or other emotional or mental disturbances. To that end, I surveyed a convenience sample of elementary music educators, mainly from Arizona’s Maricopa County, about the following research questions: (1) are educators utilizing music in their classrooms expressly for mental health and mindfulness purposes? (2) how do music educators perceive the mental health of their students? (3) how do they manage related behaviors or challenges in their classrooms? (4) do they feel they have adequate resources to address student mental health? A secondary purpose of the study was to utilize the responses to inform my creation of a website intended to provide resources that would be useful for music educators who are willing to address student mental wellbeing. In addition to receiving many individual pieces of helpful information, I analyzed survey responses for general trends. My sample indicates that music teachers do have more than moderate levels of concern over their students’ mental health. It also revealed a lack of consistency in teacher pre-service preparation and also in the kinds of programs and associated training that are in place which address student mental health.

For decades, music educators have discussed the need to expand the standard choral canon to address disparities across student demographics in collegiate choral programs. These conversations have proved insufficient, because they do not address the systemic and structural issues that are the main cause for the racial and gender disparities within various areas of choral music. To address how structural oppression has found its way into collegiate choral music, I have studied how the discourse, or language, found on several collegiate choral music program public websites upholds two main power structures within collegiate choral music: the white racial frame and settler colonialist thought. Through a fictionalized narrative based on my personal music education experiences called “Decolonizing Kiki: A Socratic Dialogue,” I provide a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of language found on current American collegiate choral program websites. The narrative analysis intentionally centered my body and marginalized identities in order to illustrate the need to reflect upon the impact of language in choral music education. In addition to addressing the white racial frame and colonialist knowledge systems and practices in the discourse of collegiate choral music, this document departs from a typical Western approach to educational research. The narrative analysis also serves as a personal educational currere, which has helped me affirm my cultural and ethnic identities, ground my teaching philosophy, and further reconceptualize the future of choral music education

Traditional jazz refers specifically to iterations of New Orleans style jazz since its beginnings in the early 20th century. It has been labelled "Dixieland," "Classic Jazz," "New Orleans jazz," "Trad," or "Our Kind of Music (OKOM)" among other names. As a scholar-performer, I learned this style of music in my undergraduate studies in Provo, Utah and later taught it as a graduate student in Phoenix, Arizona. This research grows out of the challenges I encountered mediating between the academic institution, the non-academic tradition, and student needs. Combining musicological methods such as historiography and artifact analysis with reflexive ethnography and performance pedagogy more typical of other disciplines, I consider how educators might represent traditional jazz in a more culturally responsible way. To begin, I reference historical newspapers and oral histories to show how the labels of “Dixieland” and “traditional jazz” have evolved over time and taken on a variety of associations. Specifically, I note how the word “Dixieland” is problematic for the ways it reinforces nostalgic fantasies of the “old south” and prevents African Americans from participating without the oppressive and offensive stereotypes created by white minstrel entertainers. I then consider how prominent figures have established their authority to speak for traditional jazz by looking at several pedagogical artifacts for the style of traditional jazz drumming. I highlight how each of these artifacts’ authors present the subject and color their audience’s view of traditional jazz. Having analyzed these methods of genre definition, I discuss the tenuous place of traditional jazz within university jazz programs and its potential futures through interviews I conducted with jazz educators. These interviews focus on teaching traditional jazz within the academy and the potential for the jazz ensemble as a site of scholar-performer interdisciplinary collaboration. Finally, following models of reflexive ethnography established by ethnomusicologists leading world music ensembles, I analyze my own experience teaching traditional jazz ensembles. My synthesis of methods from musicology, ethnomusicology, music education, and jazz performance departments serves as an important bridge between these disciplines, and in turn, improves jazz instruction, offers insight into genre definition, and illuminates how institutional structures shape the subject.