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Wolf Named Professor of Music
Cambridge, Mass. - December 4, 2007 - Richard Kent Wolf, an ethnomusicologist whose study of music in tribal India has transformed the way scholars approach South Asian music, has been appointed professor of music in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective July 1, 2007.
Wolf, 45, has taught in the music department at Harvard since 1999. His seminars focus on the musical traditions of India, Pakistan and Iran, exploring themes associated with ritual and religion, space and time, and sociocultural mediation. In addition to his involvement in the music department, Wolf is active in cross disciplinary initiatives and University committees including the standing committees on South Asian studies and special concentrations.
"Professor Wolf is a highly talented musicologist who blends rich ethnographic experience with impressive musical skills," said Diana Sorensen, dean for the arts and humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "He displays a deep knowledge of the regional cultures of South Asia, but is also able to engage with complex global questions of anthropology and interconnectedness. We are delighted to name Professor Wolf as one of our tenured faculty."
A dedicated researcher, Wolf has completed more than seven years of fieldwork in South Asia (India and Pakistan) and has recently extended his research interests into Iran. His published work to date has dealt with socio-musical style in South Indian classical music, emotionality in South Asian ritual contexts, the notion of the tribe in India, and the poetics of Sufi drumming and movement in Pakistan. In addition to his academic accomplishments, Wolf is an award winning performer on the vina, a plucked string instrument.
Wolf is the author of "The Black Cow's Footprint: Time, Space and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India" (Permanent Black, 2005 and University of Illinois Press, 2006). His text explores how the Kotas, a South Indian tribe, constitute themselves as individuals and as a group through music, ritual, and other forms of action patterned in time and space. The book manuscript was awarded the Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Humanities in 2005 and has received critical acclaim in a range of academic journal reviews. Wolf is also preparing a second volume on Kota music, titled "Song and Subjectivity in Modern India."
Wolf's other current projects include the edited volume "Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and Experience in South Asia and Beyond" (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), which attempts to extend the interdisciplinary scope and geographical range of South Asian musical studies while remaining firmly committed to the analysis of local concepts and practices. He is also in the process of writing a book about music in popular Islam in South Asia, which will be published by the University of Illinois Press.
This semester, Wolf leads a proseminar on the gamelan, an orchestra of Indonesian origin that includes xylophones, gongs, vocalists, and stringed instruments. In the spring he will co-teach an interdisciplinary course on the history and music of the Silk Road. Wolf will also offer a graduate seminar in which students will analyze as well as learn to play and sing South Indian classical music.
Wolf holds a B.A. in mathematics from Oberlin College, as well as an M.A. in music (1989) and a Ph.D. in music (1997) from the university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before coming to Harvard as an assistant professor in 1999, Wolf directed the Folk Arts Program at the Brooklyn Arts Council and was a post-doctoral fellow of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. He has also received grants and fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright-Hays, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2003 Wolf was named Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities.
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