PERSPECTIVE: CHAPTER 10

As a conservatory-trained singer who now teaches musicology in a liberal arts university, I have spent much of my career considering the role of research in these two very different environments. An undergraduate voice major at New England Conservatory (NEC), I received a Master of Music in Musicology at NEC and then completed my PhD at Brandeis University. Although I would go on to accept a position at Princeton University, where I have taught for 25 years (also serving as Department Chair from 2016 to 2022), my first teaching experiences were in the conservatoire: I taught undergraduate music history at NEC while completing my doctorate between 1986 and 1990 and also spent a semester teaching graduate seminars at the Boston Conservatory.