MARIA MURPHY | B.Mus., M.Mus., Ph.D.
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
2019-Present Associate Director, Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, University of Pennsylvania
2019-2020 Lecturer, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, Temple University
2018-2019 Lecturer, Music Department, Rowan University
EDUCATION
University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D., Musicology, 2018
Graduate Certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Graduate Certificate in Cinema and Media Studies
Center for Teaching and Learning Teaching Certificate
Dissertation title: “Bodies, Technologies, Viruses: Music and Social Immunity in Bio-Pop, New York City, 1980s”
Committee: Jairo Moreno (chair), Glenda Goodman, Heather Love
Rice University, M.Mus., Musicology, 2012
Thesis title: “Female Sexual Identity and Characterization in Richard Strauss’s Salome”
Committee: Marcia Citron (chair), Walter Bailey, David Ferris
Dalhousie University, B.Mus., Voice and Musicology Concentration, Distinction, 2010
Thesis title: “An Alternative Examination of Alma Schindler (Mahler)”
Advisor: Jennifer Bain
RESEARCH INTERESTS & TEACHING COMPETENCIES
Music, Multimedia Performance & Technology
Homonationalism, Coloniality & Imperialism
Cinema & Feminist Media Studies, Queer & Trans Audiovisual Production
Queer Theory, Transnational Feminist Theory & Critical Race Theory
Surveillance Studies
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Voicing the Clone: Laurie Anderson and Technologies of Reproduction,” in “Sonic Cyberfeminisms,” special issue, eds. Annie Goh, Marie Thompson, Ioana Szeman, Irene Gedalof and Sadie Wearing, Feminist Review 21, no.1 (March 2021). Winner of the 2022 IASPM-Canada Article Prize.
Book Chapters
“Electro-Pop as Trojan Horse: Hearing the Call to Arms in Anohni’s HOPELESSNESS,” in Routledge’s Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions, eds. Susan Fast and Craig Jennex (New York, 2019).
“Covering Trans Media: Temporal and Narrative Potential in Messy Musical Archives,” with Craig Jennex in The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender, ed. Stan Hawkins (New York: Routledge, 2017). Peer-reviewed.
Digital Publications
“Media Archaeology and the Cyborg,” Sonic Circulations, December 6, 2018, https://soniccirculations.com/research-blog/maria-murphy-media-archaeology-and-the-cyborg/.
“Interview with Jennifer Lynn Stoever, author of The Sonic Color Line” with Jennifer Lynn Stoever, on The International Society for the Study of Popular Music—US blog, December 1, 2017, http://iaspm-us.net/interview-series-the-sonic-color-line/.
“Interview: Joan La Barbara,” Title Magazine, September 25, 2017, http://www.title-magazine.com/2017/09/interview-joan-la-barbara/.
“Service Sound,” with Roksana Filipowska, Penn Program in Environmental Humanities: Ecologies of Data Part II, February 5, 2017, https://ppehlab.squarespace.com/blogposts/2017/2/5/ecologies-of-data-part-ii?rq=service%20sound.
President Trump, For two singers and two looper pedals with microphones, with Roksana Filipowska, Present Tense Pamphlets: Bloc Museum, 2016. Score. http://sites.northwestern.edu/present/.
Works-in-Progress
“Vulnerable Listening: The Parents’ Music Resource Center, Karen Finley, and the Aurality of Pornography”
“Tom of Finland, Listening In, and Homonationalist Intimacies”
FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, AND HONORS
Fellowships
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2020 (declined)
Critical Speaking Teaching Fellow, Communication Within the Curriculum Program, University of Pennsylvania 2017-2018
Dissertation Completion Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2017 (declined)
Shapiro Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2014
Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2012-2017
The Shepherd School of Music Susan Martz Prize, Rice University, 2010-2012
Joseph-Armand Bombardier Graduate Scholarship, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2010 (declined)
Research Grants and Prizes
Judith Tick Fellowship, Society for American Music, 2020
Honorable Mention, Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award, Society for American Music, 2020
The Feminist Review Trust Bursary, UK, 2017
Alice Paul Center Graduate Student Research Grant in Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2017
Penfield Summer Research Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2016
Graduate and Professional Student Assembly—Research Student Council Academic Event Grant, University of Pennsylvania, 2015
S. Richter Grant for Musical Outreach, Rice University, 2011
L. F. McCollum Fellowship, Rice University, 2011
Mary Ellen Hale Lovett Travel Fellowship, Rice University, 2011
Other Prizes
Linda S. Hart Teaching Award in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies — UPenn, 2022
Peter Narvaez Student Paper Prize, International Association for the Study of Popular Music—Canada, 2016
Music Department Academic Achievement Bursary, Dalhousie University, 2006-2009
INVITED TALKS
“How Clones Understand Gender,” Presented as Clone, SNF Paideia Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2022
“Difficult Listening, Viral Bodies, and Laurie Anderson during the Early Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” Yale University Music Department, New Haven, 2019
“Difficult Listening, Viral Bodies, and Laurie Anderson during the Early Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” Colloquium Series, Temple University Music Department, Philadelphia, 2019
“Learning while Failing with Sound Equipment: Listening (to) Cyborgs at the University of Pennsylvania,” Philly Summer Synth Conference, Temple University, Philadelphia, 2018
“Extended Vocality: Joan La Barbara’s Original Instrument,” Annenberg Center Live, Philadelphia, 2017
“Art Reset,” with Roksana Filipowska, Conversation Series for the Landscape/Soundscape exhibition at Arthur Ross Gallery, Philadelphia, 2017
“The Political Ethos of Silence: Sonic Action and Inaction during the early years of the AIDS Epidemic,” Gender and Sex Research Group, English Department, University of Pennsylvania, 2016
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Vulnerable Listening: The Parents’ Music Resource Center, Karen Finley, and the Aurality of Pornography,” presentation at the Society for American Music Annual Meeting, virtual, 2021
“Processing Encrypted Failure: Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman,’” presentation at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting, 2020
“Replicunts, Cyberpunks, and Disciplinary Daddies: Research-Practice in Music Studies,” presentation at the Screening Scholarship Media Festival, Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts (CAMRA), Philadelphia, 2019
“Voicing the Clone: Laurie Anderson and Technologies of Reproduction,” presentation at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting, Rochester, 2017
“Hearing the Call to Arms in Anohni’s HOPELESSNESS,” presentation at International Association for the Study of Popular Music-Canada, Toronto, 2017
Panelist, “Listening for Democracy: A workshop exploring the techniques, strategies, and politics of urban field recording,” with Naomi Waltham-Smith and Tod Machover, Slought Foundation, 2017
“Laurie Anderson, Her Clone, and Technologies of Reproduction,” presentation at Sonic Cyberfeminisms Conference, Lincoln, U.K., 2017
“Sounding Censorship, Censoring Sound: Karen Finley, Laurie Anderson, and the Feminist Sex Wars,” presentation at the National Women’s Studies Association Annual Meeting, 2016
“Viral Language, Viral Bodies: Sounding Politics in Laurie Anderson’s ‘Language is a Virus (from Outer Space),’” presentation at the joint meetings of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music—US & Canada and the Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Calgary, 2016
“Queer Vocality & Visuality in Lucas Silveira’s Autobiographical Performance Project,” presentation with Craig Jennex at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music—Canada, Ottawa, 2015
“Touching the Untouchable in Richard Strauss’s Salome,” presentation at the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group at King’s College, London, U.K., July 2013
“Adventures in Archives (A Roundtable Discussion),” presenter and panelist at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2013
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor
Gender, Sexuality & Pop Music, University of Pennsylvania, 2023
Music since 1945, Dalhousie University, 2023
A History of Western Music from Antiquity to 1750, Dalhousie University, 2022
Border Crossings: Gendered Dimensions of Globalization, Temple University, 2019, 2021
Sexual Difference in the Cinema, Temple University, 2019, 2020
Gender & Society, University of Pennsylvania, 2019, 2020, 2021
Music Appreciation, Rowan University, 2018-2019
Theory and Musicianship III, Lab Instructor, University of Pennsylvania, 2018
Voicing Politics, Politicizing Voices, University of Pennsylvania, 2017-2018
Lead TA Trainer, Center for Teaching and Learning, University of Pennsylvania, 2016
1000 Years of Musical Listening, University of Pennsylvania, 2014-2015
Teaching Assistant
1000 Years of Musical Listening, University of Pennsylvania, 2013
Medieval—Renaissance Music History Survey, Rice University, 2012
Baroque—Classical Music History Survey, Rice University, 2011
Guest Teaching
Guest Lecturer, “Voice, Reproduction, and Clones,” for Music and Biopolitics, University of California, Berkeley, 2018
Guest Lecturer, “Feminist Performance Art,” for Introduction to Feminist Theory, McMaster University, 2017
Online Learning Resources Contributor for course on Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain, Opera Philadelphia, 2015
Guest Lecturer, “Sounds of Survival: Women, Music, and the Holocaust,” The Jewish Community Center and The Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, 2011
ACADEMIC, PROFESSIONAL, AND COMMUNITY SERVICE
Co-Chair, American Musicological Society - LGBTQ Study Group, 2022-2024
Member-at-large, American Musicological Society - LGBTQ Study Group, 2019-2021
Program Committee Member, International Association for the Study of Popular Music—Canada, 2017
Co-Founder, Listening (to) Cyborgs: A Media Archaeology Workshop on Sound Technologies, 2016 (www.listeningtocyborgs.com)
Conference Organizer, Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic Annual Meeting, 2016
Graduate Student Center Grant Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, 2015-2017
Pre-Concert Speaker, “Between the Notes,” Opera Philadelphia, 2015-2016
Program Note Writer and Pre-Concert Speaker, Essential Opera, 2014-2016
Co-Founder, Director, and Vocal Coach, Rodin Opera Scenes Program, 2014, 2015
Volunteer Staff, Rice University Women’s Resource Center, 2010-2012
Program Note Writer, Shepherd School of Music, 2010-2012
Research Assistant, CANTUS Digital Manuscript Database, 2010-2012
PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE & GALLERY PIECES
“Gay Agenda,” QUAD/MAAS TWO: +4dBu, Maas Garden, Philadelphia, 2021
“Vocal F(r)ictions,” in Hotline exhibit, SPACE Gallery, Portland, 2019
“Blowback,” Incubation Series, sound design by Austin Fisher, Costume by Zach Hill and Danielle Kovalski Monsonego, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 2019
“Watch Me Daddy,” Voice and electronics performance, Fringe Scratch Night, Philadelphia 2019
“Watch Me Daddy,” Voice and electronics performance in celebration of Leo Bersani, SLOUGHT, Philadelphia, 2018
“Crossing Borders,” Voice and electronics performance as part of Philly Theater Week, Biello Martin Studio, Philadelphia, 2018
“Active Voice,” Discussant and solo voice and electronic performance, Ulises bookshop and curatorial platform dedicated to artists’ books and independent art publications, Philadelphia, 2017
“Unsung,” Vocalist, American Composers Forum and Mural Arts sound and video installation by Nadia Botello as part of the Rail Park Initiative, Philadelphia, 2016
“Anti-Performance,” Listening (to) Cyborgs Workshop Performance, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, 2016
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
American Musicological Society
Society for American Music
International Association for the Study of Popular Music—Canada
National Women’s Studies Association