Faculty Profile
Ellen Gray
Associate Professor of Music (2016)
Contact Information
Weiss Center for the Arts Room 210
717-254-8718
Bio
Lila Ellen Gray is an ethnomusicologist, cultural anthropologist, and interdisciplinary scholar of music and sound. Her research interests include: affect; gender; urban ethnography; sound studies; ethnographic theory, method and poetics; celebrity; vocality; media circulation and public culture; Portugal; the Lusophone world; and Europe’s South. Her book, Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life (2013 Duke University Press), is a musical ethnography of fado, Portugal’s most celebrated musical genre, and was the recipient of the 2014 Woody Guthrie Award of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US). Her article "Fado's City" published in Anthropology and Humanism (2011), was awarded the Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for the most significant article in the discipline in that year. Her present work concerns musical celebrity, amateur musicianship and mass tourism, and the labors of sound, heritage, and the senses in the context of multiple forms of precarity across Europe’s South. Publications include articles in the journals Ethnomusicology, History and Anthropology, and Culture, Theory and Critique. Her book, Amália at the Olympia, on the internationalization of the 20th century Portuguese fado diva Amália Rodrigues, was published in 2023 by Bloomsbury Academic Press as part of their 33 1/3 Europe series. Professor Gray She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology (2005), a MA in music (2000), and a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Duke University and a BA in humanities from New College of Florida (1993). She has previously taught at Columbia University and at the University of Amsterdam. Organizations that have supported her work include: The Bogliasco Foundation; The Social Science Research Council; The Council for European Studies; The Luso-American Foundation for Development; and the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. Her courses are informed by longstanding commitments to interdisciplinary scholarship and emphasize the role of sound and music in shaping socio-cultural life.
Education
- B.A., New College of Florida, 1993
- M.A., Duke University, 2000
- Ph.D., 2005
2023-2024 Academic Year
Fall 2023
MUAC 101 Early Musical Migrations
What did the past sound like? What kinds of music did people dance to, worship with, celebrate with, protest with? What musical instruments were used and how were they made? Who participated in music-making, composing, and listening and what did gender, race, or religion have to do with it? How did musical forms shapeshift as people migrated, traveled, conquered, colonized, or were forcibly displaced? How did new musical forms emerge in moments of encounter? These are just some of the questions that this interdisciplinary course will explore. Students will investigate select musical worlds from 900-1750 from the areas now known as Europe and the Americas. Students will acquire skills in critical listening. The ability to read music is not required for this course and non-musicians are welcome and encouraged.
ANTH 205 Listening Across Cultures
Cross-listed with MUAC 209-01.Is music a "universal language"? How might we listen to, consume, and participate in music across a diverse cultural spectrum without engaging in "cultural tourism" or appropriation? Can we listen across cultures? Working with a wide range of approaches to these questions, this course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology (the study of music and sound in relation to social life). Students will study sound recordings and ethnographic films, read widely, and examine material objects (like musical instruments) drawn from socio-politically and geographically diverse case studies. No previous musical training or note reading skills are necessary.
ANTH 205 Social Life of Music & Sound
Cross-listed with MUAC 356-01.Come explore soundscapes, from Dickinson’s campus to soundscapes of human rituals (bells, cries, sung weeping, hollers), to soundscapes of urban spaces and soundscapes in nature. Come investigate diverse musical and performance worlds. This seminar introduces students to ethnography as a genre, as a set of practices for understanding music and sound in relation to social life. Some questions we consider: What is the relationship between fieldwork and story, music and representations of music? What might be some of the ethical considerations when conducting research with musical communities in the present? We will do deep dives into sound recordings, films, texts, and photographs; do local sound walks; and students will develop basic skills in interviewing, sound recording, and ethnographic writing. Each student will develop an independent small-scale ethnographic project on a topic of their choosing. Musical note reading not required. Interested non-majors who do not meet prerequisites are encouraged to seek permission of instructor. Prerequisite: One of the following (MUAC 209, 210, 211, 212) OR one anthropology course OR permission of instructor.
MUAC 209 Listening Across Cultures
Cross-listed with ANTH 205-01.
MUAC 356 Social Life of Music & Sound
Cross-listed with ANTH 205-02.
Spring 2024
MUAC 357 Ear to the Earth
What might we learn about our relationships to the environment by orienting our ears to the earth? From the sounds of melting glaciers in the Antarctic to indigenous sound worlds in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, where a gifted composer might have once collaborated with sounds of waterfalls and birds--- what can learn about our environment by listening to it? What perspectives might tuning into sound lend to thinking about climate change and resilience? This interdisciplinary seminar introduces students to a diverse range of approaches to using sound and music as modalities through which to understand human relationships to the natural world and the environment, from diverse historical moments, cultural contexts, and geographies. Our explorations will include: environmental sound recordings and soundscape compositions, documentary films and ethnographic accounts, and emerging work at the intersection of acoustic ecology, the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences. Students will conduct local place-based observations in select outdoor environments. Guided writing assignments on sound recordings, site observations, readings, and viewings, will assist students in developing skills in description, analysis, and reflection. No musical note reading skills are necessary. Prerequisites: MUAC 209, 210, 211, or 212 OR ENST 161 (for ENST/ENSC majors) OR permission of instructor