This year's election will take place May 23-June 13, 2022.

ballot box

The SMT Executive Board has four positions that will open up after our 2022 meeting: a new President-Elect, a new Treasurer, and two new members of the Executive Board ("Members-at-Large").

Following are the names and bios of the candidates. 

Candidates for President-Elect

Eric Isaacson

Indiana University

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Eric Isaacson (PhD and MM, Indiana University, BA Luther College) is Associate Professor of Music Theory and a faculty member in the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University. Since joining the IU faculty in 1993, he has served as chair of the music theory department (2002–2008) and Director of Graduate Studies for the IU Jacobs School of Music (2008–2021). He taught previously at Ithaca College.

His book, Visualizing Music, on the art of communicating about music through images will be published by Indiana University Press in 2023. He has broad experience in computer applications in music research and pedagogy and has published on pre-serial theory and analysis. His current research includes the study of gender in music higher education, doctoral education in music, and the music of Steve Reich. 

He has served SMT in many capacities. He was the second editor of MTO (1999–2002), Treasurer (2010–14), and chair of the executive director search committee (2017–18). In addition, he has chaired the Networking Committee (2003–05), founded and coordinated the Music Informatics interest group (2006–11), chaired the committee that selected the current SMT logo (2013), and served on the Development Committee (2016–20) and the Committee on the Status of Women (2020–present).

He founded the Southern Indiana Wind ensemble, which he conducted 2007–2012. He was Music Director of The Brass Band at Indiana University 2016–2019. From March through August, 2021, he was Interim Executive Director of Louisville Ballet. 

Jan Miyake

Oberlin Conservatory

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Jan Miyake (Ph.D. and M.A., Music Theory, City University of New York, 2004 and 2001; B.A./B.M., Mathematics and Performance with a concentration in viola, Oberlin College & Conservatory, 1996) is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Oberlin College & Conservatory, where she chairs the music theory division and leads the curriculum & pedagogy subcommittee of Oberlin’s presidential initiative on racial equity and diversity. Miyake’s research interests include multiple approaches to linear analysis, corpus studies, form, and inclusive pedagogy. Her current research project uses data science to re-envision how Haydn’s instrumental forms could be categorized. Her work has appeared in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, Empirical Musicology Review, MTO, Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, Theory and Practice, Essays from the Fourth International Schenker Symposium, and Brahms and the Shaping of Time. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences, most recently at the November 2020 Joint Online Conference of SMT and AMS. She is also a founding member of the Composers of Color Resource Project, which uses Humanities Commons to store, organize, and publicize its resources. Miyake’s current service to the field includes chair of SMT’s Committee on the Status of Women (2021-22), president of Music Theory Midwest (2021-23), and editorial board member of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy (2020- ). She has previously served SMT as Treasurer (2014-18), Music Theory Online editorial board member (2013-14), Program Committee member (2012), and Professional Development Committee member (2009-11).

Candidates for Treasurer

Nora Engebretsen-Broman

Bowling Green State University

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Nora Engebretsen (Ph.D., SUNY Buffalo, 2002) is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Bowling Green State University, where she has taught since 2001 and has served as Chair of the Department of Musicology, Composition, and Theory for the past seven years.

Her research interests include neo-Riemannian and other transformational approaches, theory pedagogy, and more recently analytical approaches to timbre. She has presented papers and posters at numerous regional, national, and international conferences, including MTMW, MTNYS, SMT, CMS, Pedagogy into Practice, MAMI, Timbre 2018, ESCOM, IMS, the European Music Analysis Conference, the Nordic Musicological Congress, and the Joint Mathematics Meeting. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of Music Theory, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Theoria, and the Leonardo Music Journal, and in the edited volumes Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections and Transformations (University of Rochester Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Theories(Oxford UP), and she also contributed to and co-edited the collection What Kind of Theory is Music Theory? (Stockholm University).

Engebretsen served two terms as Treasurer of Music Theory Midwest (2011-13, 2013-15) and has also served MTMW as a member of the Program Committee (2007, 2019), Komar Committee (2003, 2020), and Nominating Committee (2008), and as Local Arrangements Co-Chair (2008). She has most recently served SMT on the Nominating Committee (member 2017; chair 2018), and she has also served on the Networking Committee (2003-05), Program Committee (2006), and the editorial board of Music Theory Online (2007-09).

Evan Jones

Florida State University

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Evan Jones is Professor of Music Theory and Coordinator of Theory/Composition at Florida State University. He has published articles on the music of Lassus, Quantz, Schubert, and Xenakis in Computer Music Journal, Intégral, the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, and Perspectives of New Music, as well as in several edited collections of essays. His most recent national/international conference presentations have concerned music written in the last twenty-five years by Malcolm Forsyth, David Lang, and Rebecca Saunders. Supported by an SMT Subvention Grant, he edited and contributed to a collection of twenty essays entitled Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet (Rochester, 2009), which was awarded SMT's Citation of Special Merit in 2010. He has also co-authored three textbooks, two with Douglass Green (The Principles and Practice of Modal Counterpoint, Routledge, 2010; The Principles and Practice of Tonal Counterpoint, Routledge, 2015) and one with Juan Chattah and Matthew Shaftel (Aural Skills in Context: A Comprehensive Approach to Sight Singing, Ear Training, Keyboard Harmony, and Improvisation, Oxford, 2013). He previously served on the SMT Executive Board as Member-at-Large (2010–12); other SMT roles include chairing the Ad-Hoc Committee on Demographics, chairing the Conference Guides Subcommittee (Professional Development Committee), and participating in the Proposal Advising Program (Committee on the Status of Women).

Jones holds the Ph.D. in music theory and the D.M.A. in cello performance from the Eastman School of Music and completed his undergraduate studies at McGill University. He is a past winner of the Sproull Fellowship from the University of Rochester and a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; he was also a co-recipient of the inaugural Alfred Mann Dissertation Prize from Eastman. From 1997–99 he served as co-editor ofIntégral, and he now serves on that journal's editorial board. He teaches a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses at FSU and has chaired or co-chaired eight doctoral dissertations in music theory and seven D.M. treatises. He received FSU's Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007, having previously won teaching prizes from both the Eastman School and the University of Rochester. His role as Theory/Composition Area Coordinator involves managing a budget for guest scholars, student travel, SMT receptions, and other expenses, and making decisions about scholarship amounts from four FSU Foundation accounts to award to graduate applicants in theory and composition (as well as non-budgetary tasks). He serves in elected positions on FSU's Promotion and Tenure Committee, FSU's Graduate Policy Committee, the College of Music Promotion and Tenure Committee, and the College of Music Merit Committee; he also chairs the College of Music Curriculum Committee and the FSU Festival of New Music Committee.

An active cellist, Jones has given the world premieres of solo works by Clifton Callender, Robert Morris, and Ciro Scotto, the North American premieres of solo and chamber works by Iannis Xenakis, and the New York City premieres of works by Christopher Auerbach-Brown and Dexter Morrill (in Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Hall, respectively). He currently performs as assistant principal cellist in the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra.

Candidates for Member-at-Large

Clifton Boyd

New York University

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Clifton Boyd (Ph.D., Music Theory, Yale University, 2022; M.M., Music Theory, Indiana University, 2016; B.M., Viola Performance and Music Theory, University of Michigan, 2014) will be Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at New York University in September 2022, and Assistant Professor of Music beginning in 2024. His research explores themes of (racial) identity, politics, and social justice in 20th- and 21st-century American popular music. His current book project, Keep It Barbershop: Stylistic Preservation and Whiteness in the Barbershop Harmony Society, demonstrates how nostalgia-fueled efforts toward musical and cultural preservation can perpetuate racial injustice. Combining critical race studies and music theory, this work furnishes new understandings of whiteness, barbershop as a racialized musical practice, and vernacular music theory. He has presented his work nationally at major conferences and invited talks, and his articles and essays appear or are forthcoming in Music Theory and Analysis, Music Theory Spectrum, Theory and Practice, and Inside Higher Ed, as well as the edited collections The Oxford Handbook for Public Music Theory and Being #BlackintheIvory: Contending with Racism in the American University.

In 2017, Boyd founded Project Spectrum, a graduate student–led coalition committed to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in music academia. As chair, he oversaw the organization of their inaugural national symposium, “Diversifying Music Academia: Strengthening the Pipeline” (2018). Project Spectrum has continued its efforts through biennial symposia, articles (Current Musicology, Theory and Practice, American Music), and invited talks and workshops. Boyd has served the SMT as a member of the Committee on Race and Ethnicity (2017–20; mentorship coordinator, 2019–20), and as a mentor for the Committee on the Status of Women’s Proposal Mentoring Program (2021). In 2021, he was invited to represent the SMT for the American Council of Learned Societies’ Intention Foundry, an initiative that aims to accelerate equity, inclusion, and structural change in the academy. He also served on the Society for American Music’s Program Committee for its 2022 annual meeting, and currently serves on the AMS’s Committee on Cultural Diversity (2021–23). He is an active member of the Engaged Music Theory Working Group (2020–).

Sumanth Gopinath

University of Minnesota

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Sumanth Gopinath (Ph.D. and M.Ph., Music, Yale University, 2005 and 2001; B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 1997) is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he has taught since 2005. He is also an affiliate faculty member in the Departments of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and American Studies. His research interests include Steve Reich, musical minimalism, and post-WWII US/UK concert music; sound and digital media; race; Marxism and political economy; US popular music, including country, bluegrass, old-time, and folk musics; and the politics of higher education, including music theory. Much of his work explores the intersection of theory, historical musicology, and cultural studies and takes an explicitly hermeneutic approach to music analysis; his graduate and undergraduate courses are often oriented towards questions of musical meaning. He is the author of The Ringtone Dialectic: Economy and Cultural Form (MIT Press, 2013), co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, vols. 1 and 2 (2014) with Jason Stanyek and Rethinking Reich (Oxford UP, 2019) with Pwyll ap Siôn, and has published in various journals including Music Theory Spectrum, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of the Society for American Music, Gamut, First Monday, Glendora Review, and several edited volumes. He has presented at annual conferences for SMT, AMS, SEM, SAM (Society for American Music), ASA (American Studies Association), ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association), the EMP Pop Conference, and invited keynotes at MTSNYS and MinSoc (the Society for Minimalist Music). He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Musicological Society and the Journal of Musicology, and was previously on the editorial board of the Sound Studies journal (2014–2020); he has served as an external reviewer for numerous journals and presses. He has served on the Program Committee (2016) and Nominating Committee (2018) and on the Executive Committee as Area III Representative (2019–2021) of Music Theory Midwest (MTMW). He has served on the Cold War Study Group (2008–2010), Council (2015–2017), and Committee on Cultural Diversity (2018–2020) of the American Musicological Society. He is a program committee member of the Society for Minimalist Music (2021–2022) and Society for American Music (2022–2023). He has served or serves the SMT in the following capacities: Committee on Diversity (2007–2010), and Post-1945 Music Analysis Interest Group Publication Award Committee (2022), and as an invited speaker for panels organized by the Committee on Diversity (2007), Professional Development Committee (2011), Committee on Race and Ethnicity (2020), and Committee on Accessibility and Disability (2021).

J. Daniel Jenkins

University of South Carolina

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J. Daniel Jenkins is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of South Carolina. He holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, an M.M. from the University of Louisville, and a B.M. from the University of Kentucky. He is editor of Schoenberg’s Program Notes and Analyses (2016) and The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory (forthcoming). His articles and reviews appear in Music Theory Online and Intégral among other publications. In addition to his research on twentieth-century art music, Jenkins has been an advocate for increased awareness of public music theory. His own efforts in public music theory include teaching at Lee Correctional Facility in Bishopville, SC, and the Lourie Center in Columbia, SC. A dedicated pedagogue, Jenkins has served on the editorial boards of The Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and Engaging Students and received teaching awards from the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester, and the University of South Carolina. He also enjoys performing as a countertenor.

Jenkins has been a member of SMT since 1999 and has presented several papers at the annual meeting. For a number of years, he has participated in the Conference Guide program, sponsored by the Professional Development Committee, and in various mentoring programs offered by the Committee on the Status of Women. He served five years on the Committee on Race and Ethnicity (formerly the Committee on Diversity), including three years as chair (2013–2018). During that time, he was part of the lead team of the Music Theory Outreach Project. Jenkins’s additional service to SMT includes being member of the Demographics and Diversity Task Force (2017–2018), member of Task Force on Diversity (2018–2019), member of the 2019 Program Committee, chair of the 2020 Program Committee, member of the Committee on Workshop Programs (2019–2020), and member of the Annual Meeting Ad Hoc Committee (2019–2021, serving the final year as chair). In 2020, he received the SMT Volunteer of the Year Award jointly with Brian Moseley. Maintaining membership in several Interest Groups, he is currently co-chair with Phil Stoecker of the Autographs and Archival Documents Interest Group.

Anabel Maler

University of Iowa

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Anabel Maler is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Iowa. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2018, where she completed a dissertation titled “Hearing Form in Post-Tonal Music.” Her book project, Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music, is the first monograph-length analytical study of sign language music (forthcoming with Oxford University Press). Her research on sign language, Deafness, disability, and music has appeared in Music Theory Online, Music Perception, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies. Her coauthored publication “Rhythmic Techniques in Deaf Hip Hop” received the 2021 Adam Krims Award. Her work on post-tonal formal function has also appeared in the journal Intégral. She has presented her research at numerous regional, national, and international conferences on music theory and analysis, musicology, and Disability Studies.

Maler’s service to the Society of Music Theory, the University of Iowa, and the field of music theory has centered on expanding accessibility, supporting the needs of the disability community, promoting allyship, and advocating for equity. She is currently Chair of the SMT Standing Committee on Accessibility and Disability. During her tenure as Chair, she has advocated for expanding the Committee’s purview to encompass not only conference accessibility but also scholarship and pedagogy related to music and disability. This expansion is reflected in changes to the Committee’s name, its mission statement, and its new guaranteed session on the annual conference program. She has also served the SMT as Chair of the Music and Disability Interest Group. Maler’s service to the University of Iowa includes membership on the Undergraduate and Graduate Curriculum Committees, the Library Committee, and the Student Disability Services Advisory Board. She has previously served on program committees for Music Theory Midwest and the Midwest chapter of the AMS, and is currently a member of the editorial board for the journal Engaging Students.