I am an Assistant Professor of Music at Brandeis University. In 2020-2021, I was a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellow through the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and I’m currently turning my dissertation into an ethnographic monograph entitled Praise to Open Palms: A Moral Economy of Praise in the Sultanate of Oman. I study the role of publicly performed sung praise in producing and shaping cross-class relationships that are simultaneously communicative, social, normative, and economic. My work on Iraqi Maqām and Omani Arab performance has been published in Asian Music, The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, HAU, and the Yale Journal of Music & Religion. From 2019-2020 I was the Joseph E. and Grace W. Valentine Visiting Assistant Professor in Music at Amherst College. I received my Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2019, advised by Jane Sugarman. My 18 months of fieldwork in Oman were funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research from 2015-2017.
My Work.
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My Research
I study music, language, and dance as social action. My recent work has been on the political economy of praise singing in the Arab Gulf state of Oman, but I also study the history and practice of the Iraqi Maqām.
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My Teaching
I teach a variety of graduate seminars, proseminars, and introductory courses at Brandeis.
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Curriculum Vitae
Current as of March 2023.
My fieldwork has been in the Interior Region of Oman and the UAE.
