AMS LGBTQ Study Group

About Us

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Study Group is a recognized special interest group of the American Musicological Society. Our objectives include increasing awareness of sexuality and music in the academy, promoting contact among music scholars working in LGBTQ studies, and establishing a forum for the presentation of such research. We also intend to provide an environment in which to examine the process of coming out in academia, and to contribute to a positive political climate for affirmative action and LGBTQ curricula.

We convene annually at the national meeting of the AMS and host an evening session and party. These sessions include invited guest speakers and cutting-edge graduate student research. Each year we present the Philip Brett Award which honors exceptional work in LGBTQ music studies.

Board Members

Lee Tyson

Lee Kimura Tyson

Co-Chair

they/them

Alex Pasqualini

Alex Nik Pasqualini

Co-Chair

they/them

Lee Kimura Tyson
Co-Chair (2024 – Present)
Member-at-large (2022-24)

Lee Tyson (they/them) is the Pride Fellow at Ithaca College’s Center for LGBTQ Education, Outreach, and Services. They are a multiracial (Japanese American, white), non-binary trans educator and advocate interested in creative strategies for building accessible campus communities of belonging and mutual care. Lee holds a B.A. in music from the University of Nevada, Reno, an M.M. in musicology and graduate certificate in gender studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in musicology with an LGBT studies graduate minor from Cornell University, where they researched queer pop music and trans vocal practices. Lee is excited to return to Ithaca after a year as a postdoctoral fellow in humanities leadership at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio

Alex Pasqualini
Co-Chair (2024- Present)

Alex (they/them) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Music & Sound Studies at Cornell University whose research is focused on the intersections of popular music, activism, and queer community building. Their dissertation project explores a lineage of humour, play, and camp in expressive culture as a means of community building for dyke and trans masculine individuals from the 1960s-1990s. Alex’s interests in queer belonging through playful art is also reflected outside of their scholarship such as their role as co-president of QGrads at Cornell, the Graduate Coordinator at Cornell’s LGBT Resource Center, the President of Cornell’s Music Graduate Association, their work as a zine workshop facilitator, and as and a local drag performer and producer.

AMS LGBTQ Study Group’s

RETURN TO CHICAGO

Join us at the Palmer House Hilton on November 15th and 16th.

Conference Agenda

In 1991, the then-named Gay and Lesbian Study Group of the AMS gathered at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago for the Annual Meeting, further coalescing one year after the study group’s founding in Oakland […] Thirty-three years later, the LGBTQ Study Group now celebrates its return to Chicago as an opportunity to reflect on these early efforts, think critically about the present needs of LGBTQ music scholars, and strengthen our collective network to attend to those needs in the future.

Alex Pasqualini & Lee Tyson

AMS LGBTQ Study Group Co-Chairs, 2024

EVENTS:

📅 Panel: Fri. 12:30-2pm
📅 Party: Sat. 9:30-11pm
📅 Business: Sat. 12:30pm

AMS Annual Meeting Events Annual Meeting Uncategorized

Chicago 2024

Alex Nik Pasqualini

•

October 24, 2024

Read about the new chairs, our plans for Chicago, and more in our new blog post and email!

Newsletter Sign-up

March 18, 2022
Newsletter Archive

March 4, 2022
2010 Annual Meeting Study Group Panel

March 3, 2022

Chicago Events

Nov

Queer at AMS: The LGBTQ Study Group Returns to Chicago

This session will feature a 45-minute panel of scholars present at that early meeting, including Lydia Hamessley, Mitchell Morris, Suzanne Cusick, and Judith Peraino, who will speak to these foundational efforts to support LGBTQ scholars and knowledge production. Following the panel, attendees will be invited to share their reflections on the past, present, and future of LGBTQ music studies in small groups, offering an opportunity for cross-generational scholarly engagement

Salon 10

12:30-2:00pm

Program Description

Nov

Business Meeting & Conversation

Monroe

12:30-2:00pm

More info

Nov

LGBTQ Study Group Party !

Featuring Drag Performers
Femme de Violette, Tilia Cordata, and Just Alex!

Monroe

9:30-11pm

More info

Tiffany Naiman
Co-chair (2021-23)

Tiffany Naiman is the Director of Music Industry Programs and an Assistant Teaching Professor at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, as well as a lecturer in the Musicology department. She is a scholar of popular music, temporality, and disability studies. She currently serves as co-chair of the LGBTQ Study Group of the American Musicological Society. Tiffany has developed specialization as a David Bowie scholar and her work is published in Blackstar Rising, Purple Rain (Duke University Press, 2023), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis (Bloomsbury, 2019), David Bowie: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2015), and Enchanting David Bowie: Space/Time/Body/Memory (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Maria Murphy
Co-chair (2022-24)

Maria Murphy is the Associate Director at the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work examines the relationship between music technologies and body politics through multimedia performance art, American experimentalism, and aesthetic activism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Maria is also invested in creating spaces for hands-on and public-facing research. She is the host of Gender Jawn, a podcast about the politics, performances, and pedagogies of gender & sexuality and, as part of her research practice, she has performed as her own clone, a submissive masc-4-masc daddy, an abstract dandelion powered by fans, and a 19th-century Irish immigrant sex worker.

Kerry O’Brien
Member-at-large (2021-22)

Kerry O’Brien is a musicologist who specializes in experimental music, minimalism, and countercultural spirituality. She has taught at Yale University, the University of Washington, and Indiana University (where she earned her PhD in musicology), and currently teaches at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Her writings have appeared in the Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, Tempo, the Chicago Reader, The New York Times, The New Yorker online, and the edited collection Rethinking Reich. Her book On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement, co-edited with William Robin, is forthcoming with the University of California Press.

Louis Niebur
(2022-24)

Further Back…

Year	Co-Chars	Co-Editors	Secretary	Members at Large
1991	Phillip Brett Lydia Hamessley	Paul Attinello Frances Feldon	Paul Borg	Bibliographer: Brian Newhouse
1992-1993	Phillip Brett Lydia Hamessley	Paul Attinello Frances Feldon	Paul Borg	Patrick Brannon Suzanne Cusick Alan Lewis Judith Peraino
1994	Lydia Hamessley Mitchell Morris	Chip Whitesell Frances Feldon	Paul Borg	Todd Borgerding Mario Champagne J. Michele Edwards Gayle Murchison Judith Peraino Gary Thomas
1995 (March)	Lydia Hamessley Mitchell Morris	Martha Mockus Chip Whitesell	Paul Borg	J. Michele Edwards Bill Meredith Gayle Murchison Gary Thomas
1995 (October)	Lydia Hamessley Mitchell Morris	Martha Mockus Chip Whitesell	Mario Champagne	Richard J. Agee J. Michele Edwards Bill Meredith Judith Peraino
1996 (October)	Lydia Hamessley Mitchell Morris	Martha Mockus Chip Whitesell	Mario Champagne	Richard J. Agee J. Michele Edwards Bill Meredith Judith Peraino
1997	Mitchell Morris Suzanne Cusick	Martha Mockus Stephen McClatchie	Mario Champagne	Bibliographer: J. Michele Edwards Member-at-Large: Richard J. Agee J. Peter Burkholder Kelley Harness Judith Peraino
1998	Suzanne Cusick Chip Whitesell	Stephen McClatchie Gillian Rodger	Judith Peraino	Bibliographer: J. Michele Edwards Member-at-Large: Ivan Raykoff J. Peter Burkholder Kelley Harness Nadine Hubbs
1999	Suzanne Cusick Chip Whitesell	Gillian Rodger Ivan Raykoff	Judith Peraino	Michael McClellan Kelly Harness Todd Borgerding Nadine Hubbs
2000	Suzanne Cusick Jim McCalla	Gillian Rodger Ivan Raykoff	Judith Peraino	Michael McClellan Kelly Harness Todd Borgerding Margo Chaney
2001 (Spring)	Kelley Harness Jim McCalla	Gillian Rodger Ivan Raykoff	Richard J. Agee	Margo E. Chaney Liane Curtis Stephen McClatchie Mike McClellan
2001 (Fall)	Kelley Harness Jim McCalla	Ivan Raykoff	Richard J. Agee	Margo E. Chaney Liane Curtis Stephen McClatchie Mike McClellan
2002 (Spring)	Kelley Harness Jim McCalla	Weatherly Thomas Ivan Raykoff	Richard J. Agee	Margo E. Chaney Liane Curtis Stephen McClatchie Mike McClellan
2002 (Fall)	Kelley Harness Jim McCalla	Ivan Raykoff	Richard J. Agee	Margo E. Chaney Liane Curtis Stephen McClatchie Mike McClellan
2003	Margo E. Chaney Jim McCalla	James P. Cassaro	Richard J. Agee	Nina Tredwell Liane Curtis Stephen McClatchie Mike McClellan
2004	Margo E. Chaney Stephen McClatchie	Rose Theresa	Richard J. Agee	Jessica Courtie Luke S. Jensen Mike McClellan Nina Treadwell
2005	Gillian Rodger Stephen McClatchie	Rose Theresa	Richard J. Agee	Jessica M. Courtier Luke S. Jensen Christina Baade Stephan Pennington
2006	Gillian Rodger William Meredith	Rose Theresa Robert Torre	Richard J. Agee	Luke S. Jensen Christina Baade Stephan Pennington Megan Jenkins
2007 (Spring)	Judith Peraino William Meredith	Robert Torre	Ivan Raykoff	Luke S. Jensen Christina Baade Stephan Pennington Megan Jenkins
2008	Judith Peraino William Meredith
2009	Judith Peraino Nina Tredwell	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham
2010	Judith Peraino Nina Tredwell	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham		William Cheng Jeremiah Davenport
2011	Nina Tredwell Emily Wilbourne	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham		William Cheng Jeremiah Davenport
2012	Nina Tredwell Emily Wilbourne	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham		William Cheng Jeremiah Davenport Ryan Dohoney
2014	Emily Wilbourne Stephan Pennington	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham		Ryan Dohoney
2015	Emily Wilbourne Stephan Pennington			Nicole Hammond Ryan Dohoney Clara Latham
2016	Stephan Pennington Heather Hadlock	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham		Nicole Hammond Kyle Kaplan Chris Nickell
2017	Stephan Pennington Heather Hadlock	Event Coordinator: Clara Latham		Kyle Kaplan Chris Nickell Lauron Kehre Gavin Lee
2018	Shana Goldin-Perschbacher Heather Hadlock Ryan Dohoney			Lauron Kehrer Gavin Lee Gayle Murchison Tiffany Naiman
2019	Ryan Dohoney Shana Goldin-Perschbacher Sarah Hanknis			Gayle Murchison Tiffany Naiman Maria Murphy Christi Jay Wells

AMS LGBTQ Study Group

About Us

Board Members

AMS LGBTQ Study Group’s

RETURN TO CHICAGO

Chicago 2024

Read about the new chairs, our plans for Chicago, and more in our new blog post and email!

Newsletter Sign-up

Newsletter Archive

2010 Annual Meeting Study Group Panel

Chicago Events

Further Back…

AMS LGBTQ Study Group