Dr Amy Brosius BMus, PhD

I studied voice and music education at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, NJ, USA where I received a Bachelor in Music Education, before completing a PhD at New York University, NY, USA in Musicology, under the supervision of Dr Suzanne Cusick.

I teach modules and give lectures on early modern music that focus on societal issues such as race, class, gender, identity, and musical issues such as the construction of the canon, reception, and performance practice. I also teach American folk, roots, and popular music courses that address similar issues.

I would be happy to hear from prospective postgraduate candidates wishing to pursue research on issues relating to early modern music as well as gender and sexuality, singers/singing culture, and performance studies.

My current research project involves the completion of a monograph on Roman female singers.   The materials that inform this monograph encompass a wide variety of media: portraits and other paintings; written testimony by the singers themselves (theatrical pieces, poems, letters); and writings by others about their performances, characters, and financial situations (letters, poetic volumes, performance accounts, news-generating documents). The monograph will focus on the lives of female singers who performed and constructed their careers mainly in gatherings held by the upper echelons of the social elite in the satellite courts of Rome. In this study I will focus on the different roles these women played in elite society, the types of relationships they developed with elite men and women, and their active participation in the political happenings of the courts.