Home » Administration » Committees

Committee on Diversity

Mission and Activities

The SMT Committee on Diversity seeks to promote diversity--of race, of culture, of values, and of points of view--within the Society, detailed in its Statement of Purpose (pdf). To this end, the Committee is involved with issues and pursuits in order to:

  • offer a venue for the voicing of concerns about diversity by SMT members, and bring such concerns to the attention of the Executive Board, or the Society as a whole, as the Committee deems appropriate;
  • develop means of offering support, in the form of mentoring, arranging relevant colloquia and other events at national meetings, and so forth, to diverse members of the Society;
  • work with the Committee on Diversity of the American Musicological Society and other scholarly societies in providing program sessions and informal forums at national meetings, encouraging participation in regional societies, and seeking grant support for common initiatives;
  • offer funding for conference attendance through the SMT Minority Travel Grant and the SMT International Travel Grant.

Members

  • Chair: Horace Maxile (2013)
  • Deborah Rohr (2011), Alex Sanchez-Behar (2011), Christopher Doll (2013), Anna Gawboy (2013), Roger Graybill (2013), Wendy Lee (2013), Andrew Pau (2013)

2011 Annual Meeting Activities (past)

At the 2011 Annual SMT Meeting in Minneapolis, the Committee on Diversity co-sponsored, along with the Popular Music Interest Group, a session devoted to the work of Minneapolis-native Prince. The session was entitled "Your Old-Fashioned Music, Your Old Ideas: Prince, Minneapolis, and the Sounds of Diversity," and took place on Friday, October 28, 9am-12pm. The chair of the session was Christopher Doll (Rutgers University); the presentations in the sessions were as follows:

  • Griffin Woodworth (MakeMusic, Inc.): Uptown Controversy: Genre, Location, and Confrontation in Prince’s Early Guitar Music
  • Matthew Valnes (University of Pennsylvania): "If You Can Describe It, It Ain't Funky": Prince, Improvisation, and the Concept of "Genre Works" in Musical Performance
  • Dana Baitz (York University, Toronto): Let a Woman Be a Woman and a Man Be a Man: On the Conditions Facilitating Liberatory Themes in Prince’s Music
  • Emily M. Gale (University of Virginia): Prince and the Postmodern Politics of Stylistic Promiscuity in "Willing and Able"

Contact

For any questions pertaining to the SMT Committee on Diversity, please contact Horace Maxile, Chair.