I am a cultural historian and writer listening primarily for the sounds of belief in America. I earned my PhD in musicology in 2017 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently I am an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Oklahoma.
My writing and teaching investigate the place-making and myth-making role of music in America. Most of my research draws upon the lived experience of music among communities throughout the country, often asking what job they are hiring a piece of music to do for them. American musical theater is an everywhere genre and intersects with a strikingly diverse group of communities, which is why I find it such a useful lens through which to glimpse America’s values, whether imagined or real. I am the author of three books on the everyday work of American musical theater, Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America (2019), Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America (2021), and Unstaged Grief: Musicals and Mourning in Midcentury America (2025), and editor of the volume The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in Las Vegas (2023). My biography of the iconic 1940 song “When You Wish Upon a Star” will be published as part of Oxford University Press’s Keynotes series in 2025, and in the same year The Music Room: A Story of Art, Friendship, and Gathering in Betty Freeman’s Beverly Hills Home will be published by the same press.
These approaches have opened my work to a variety of disciplines and ways of thinking. My writing can be found in journals such as American Music, Journal of the Society for American Music, Tempo, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Twentieth-Century Music, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and in the edited volumes The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies and The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical. Some of my public writing has been featured in Musicology Now, Zócalo Public Square, Religion Dispatches, The Oklahoman, and The Salt Lake Tribune. I work alongside Amy Coddington as series co-editor of Music & Material Encounters with Amherst College Press and am the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society.
I teach a wide range of musical topics for undergraduate and graduate students, and guide a number of musicological research projects. My students have been offered acceptances to some of the most competitive doctoral programs in the country, including the University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina, and Harvard University.
In addition to my musicological pursuits, I am an active musical collaborator, having worked as a vocal coach, pianist, and musical director for Oklahoma City University, DePaul University, Chicago Opera Theater, AMDA, Music Theatre of Wichita, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, among others. Many former students are enjoying a variety of careers in theater, including starring roles on Broadway, film and television, and numerous regional and touring productions around the world.