Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award

The Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award is designed to recognize a single dissertation on American music for its exceptional depth, clarity, significance, and overall contribution to the field. "American" is understood here to embrace all of North America, including Central America and the Caribbean, and aspects of its cultures elsewhere in the world.

Dissertations from American Studies, American history, and other fields beyond theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology are welcome as long as the primary focus of the work is a musical topic.

This award consists of a plaque and cash award presented at the National Conference in the Spring.

2013-2014 Application Information

Past Winners of the Housewright Dissertation Award

Diss. Year Winner
2011 Sheryl Kaskowitz, “As We Raise Our Voices: A Social History and Ethnography of ‘God Bless America,’ 1918-2010” Harvard University, 201
2010 Nathan Platte, “Musical Collaboration in the Films of David O. Selznick, 1932-1957” (University of Michigan)
2009

Katherine Leigh Axtell, "Maiden Voyage: The Genesis and Reception of Show Boat, 1926-1932" (University of Rochester)
2008 Jonathan Greenberg, "Singing Up Close: Voice, Language, and Race in American Popular Music, 1925–1935" (UCLA)
2007 Ayden Adler, "Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music": Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, 1930-1950." (Eastman School of Music)
2006 Drew Davies, "The Italianized Frontier: Music at Durango Cathedral, Español Culture, and Aesthetics of Devotion in Eighteenth-Century New Spain" (University of Chicago)
2005 Jeremy Grimshaw, "Music of a 'More Exalted Sphere': Compositional Practice, Biography, and Cosmology in the Music of La Monte Young" (Eastman School of Music)
2004 Charles Hiroshi Garrett, "Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music in the Twentieth Century" (UCLA)
2003 Mark J. Butler, "Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music" (Indiana University)
2002 Mark Clague, "Chicago Counterpoint: The Auditorium" (University of Chicago)
2001 Elyse Carter Vosen, "Seventh-Fire Children: Gender, Embodiment, and Musical Performances of Decolonization by Anishinaabe Youth" (University of Pennsylvania)
2000 Sandra J. Graham, "The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Concert Spiritual: the Beginnings of an American Tradition" (New York University)
1999 Amy C. Beal, "Patronage and Reception History of American Experimental Music in West Germany, 1945-1986" (University of Michigan)
1998 David Ake, "Being Jazz: Identities and Images" (UCLA)
1997 Jennifer L. DeLapp, "Copland in the Fifties: Music and Ideology in the McCarthy Era" (University of Michigan)
1995 David Patterson, "Appraising the Catchwords, c. 1942-1959: John Cage's Asian- Derived Rhetoric and the Historic Reference of Black Mountain College" (Columbia University)

Note: For years not listed (after 1995), no award was given.