Musicology and Ethnomusicology Masters Theses

MSU students in the Musicology/Ethnomusicology MA program have completed research projects on a wide range of musicological and ethnomusicological topics, from early European polyphony to the performance of Irish traditional music during the COVID-19 pandemic.

MA theses defended in the area since 2010

Nya Nulty (2026)

“Arts and Crafts: Cultural Dynamics of Bohemia through Crafted Identities in Fin-de-siècle Operas” (Advisor: Marcie Ray)

Emily Demski (2023)

“It’s Tricky to Rock a Rhyme: Rap-Rock and the ‘Purification’ of Genre, 1980-2000” (Advisor: Kenneth Prouty)

Christine Roberts (2023)

“‘Let Them Eat Cake’: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006) as a Musical Vehicle of Eighteenth-Century Gender and Colonial Identity” (Advisor: Marcie Ray)

Felipe Pedro Wieczorek Villas Boas (2022)

“The Poetic-Musical Intertextual Rhetoric of the Polish Brethren’s Liturgy” (Advisor: Sarah Long)

Suzanna Feldkamp (2022)

“Bele Pucele: The Music and Identity of Maroie De Dergnau” (Advisor: Sarah Long)

Alison Sall (2021)

“Who’s Afraid of the American Middlebrow? Samuel Barber, Modernist Discourse, and the Great Divide” (Advisor: Kevin Bartig)

Andrew Bobker (2021)

“Keeping the Tradition Alive: Irish Traditional Music Sessions During COVID-19” (Advisor: Michael Largey)

Matthew Kay (2019)

“A Return to Brotherhood: Nationalism, Globalization and the Negotiation of Identity in Romani Brass Band Music in Serbia” (Advisor: Michael Largey)

Tia Harvey (2019)

“Who Tells Your Story? Intersections of Power, Domesticity, and Sexuality Relating to Rap and Song in the Musical Hamilton” (Advisor: Marcie Ray)

Kelli Smith (2018)

“Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Rhetoric of Online Musical Discourse” (Advisor: Kevin Bartig)

Jonathan Gómez (2018)

“The Politics of Sounding Black: Nationalism, Agency, and the Experience of Black Jazz Musicians” (Advisor: Kenneth Prouty)

Trevor Nelson (2015)

“The Dissident Dame: Alternative Feminist Methodologies and the Music of Ethel Smyth” (Advisor: Marcie Ray)

Emily Baumgart (2015)

“‘What One Man Can Invent, Another Can Discover’: Music and the Transformation of Sherlock Holmes from Literary Gentleman Detective to On-Screen Romantic Genius” (Advisor: Kevin Bartig)

Stephen Armstrong (2014)

“Liszt, His Scholars, and The B-minor Ballade: A Study of Textural Transformation” (Advisor: Kevin Bartig)

Patrick Bonczyk (2014)

“‘Longing Eyes’: Two Erotic Devotions in Henry Playford’s Harmonia Sacra, 1688, 1693” (Advisor: Marcie Ray)

Vanessa Tonelli (2013)

“Women and Music in the Venetian Ospedali” (Advisor: Marcie Ray)

Ellen Daniels (2012)

“Avant-Garde Grit: John Cale and Experimental Techniques in Popular Music” (Advisor: Kenneth Prouty)

Igor Houwat (2011)

“Maintaining a Musical Tradition in Arab-America: An Oral History of Abdel Karim Bader” (Advisor: Michael Largey)

Monica Hershberger (2011)

“Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballads: Looking Back to the Radical Politics of 1930s America” (Advisors: Kevin Bartig and Carol A. Hess)

Laura Donnelly (2010)

“Life after Zouk: Emerging Popular Music of the French Antilles” (Advisor: Michael Largey)