The American Musicological Society (AMS) has announced the recipients of its 2023 academic year graduate research and dissertation fellowships. Each year the AMS awards fellowships as part of the following programs: the Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation-Year Fellowship; The Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship; and the William F. Holmes / Frank D'Accone Dissertation Fellowship in Opera Studies. These fellowships support dissertation and predissertation research in musicology and related fields, and are a crucial part of the Society's ongoing investment in the future of musicology.
Included in this year's recipients are two UChicago Department of Music graduate students, Devon J Borowski and Anna B. Gatdula. Read the full list of recipients on the AMS website.
Devon J Borowski, a PhD candidate in Music History and Theory is one of five recipients of the Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation-Year Fellowship. His dissertation explores eighteenth-century singing cultures and colonial discourses surrounding voice, humanity, and history in late Georgian Britain. It considers how marginal actors engaged with the musical voice (through singing, listening, teaching, and documenting) to define their own relationship with empire and nascent constructions of whiteness. He has received the LGBT Studies research fellowship at Yale University and the Stuart Tave Humanities Teaching Fellowship at the University of Chicago. A former recipient of the Eileen Southern Fund grant from the American Musicological Society’s Committee on Cultural Diversity, he has also served on the Society’s Committee on Race & Ethnicity. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and holds two Master’s of Music degrees from The Johns Hopkins University Peabody Conservatory in Early Music Performance (Voice) and Musicology.
Anna B. Gatdula, a PhD candidate in Music History and Theory, is one of two recipients of The Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship. The Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship is intended to increase the presence of minority scholars and teachers in musicology, the fellowship supports one year of graduate work for a student at a U.S. or Canadian university who is a member of a historically underrepresented group, including, in the U.S., African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, and, in Canada, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities (as defined by Canadian legislation). Anna was born in the Philippines before immigrating to the U.S. as a child.
Anna received a BM in voice performance before pursuing an MA in musicology at Indiana University. A former recipient of the Eileen Southern Fund from the American Musicological Society Committee on Cultural Diversity, she currently serves on the AMS Committee on Women and Gender. She is a proud co-founder and current co-chair of Project Spectrum, an interdisciplinary group of music studies graduate students and faculty committed to the work of diversity, equity, and access in the field. Her dissertation, titled “Atomic Spectacles of a Nuclear Empire,” focuses on post-1945 opera, musical, film, and public service announcement, which narrate the United States’ position as a global superpower in the wake of its use of nuclear weapons. Her research outlines the history of nuclear biopolitics in the U.S. and argues that the aesthetic strategy of spectacle was central to the idealization (or fantasy) of security and the image of citizenship. Outside of the academy, Anna pursues one too many hobbies including poetry writing, photography, baking, and triathlon.