Short Presents Research at AMS-SMT’s 2023 Annual Meeting in Denver

Associate Professor of Music Theory and Embedded Music Theory Tutor Coordinator Rachel Short, Ph.D., presented her research at the 2023 American Musicological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. AMS was held as a joint meeting with the Society for Music Theory (SMT). Dr. Short also chaired a session on music and dance for SMT, and presented a talk for SMT’s Scholars for Social Responsibility Interest Group. She also presented a lightning talk on her recent chapter, ‘The Changing Rhythms of Bridges and Ends,’ in “Here for the Hearing: Analyzing the Music in Musical Theater” for SMT’s musical theatre interest group session on the book. The work is available online for free and was edited by Michael Buchler and Gregory John Decker, and published by University of Michigan Press in May 2023.

Short also chaired a committee to elect the incoming chair for SMT’s music theory pedagogy interest group and is on the advisor committee for the dance and movement interest group.

Short’s talk for AMS, “What is ‘Wild’ about Wildeiana Music? Music and Oscar Wilde in 1882,” was part of the session, “Queer Musical Codes in Disguise.” It builds off her 2019 research trip, a Clark Short-Term Fellowship, where she did research in UCLA’s Clark Wildeiana Archive (2019).

She also met with scholar Christi Jay Wells, with whom she is co-authoring the chapter, ‘This Thing Might Turn into Something: The Choreomusical Layers of Hellzapoppin,’ in the forthcoming book, “The Routledge Companion to Choreomusicology,” co-edited by Samuel Dorf and Simon Morrison, under contract with Routledge and expected Spring 2024.

Short also visited the Molly Brown Historical House Museum, looking at their news clippings from a time similar to that on which she presented.