Dr. Gavin S. K. Lee Awarded AMS Teaching Award and the Philip Brett Award by the American Musicological Society (AMS)
Dr. Gavin S. K. Lee – currently a member of the International Board of our Musicology and Ethnomusicology Hub, and one of the 2024 Elizabeth Wood Research Fellows – was recently awarded two very prestigious awards by the American Musicological Society (AMS): the AMS Teaching Award and the Philip Brett Award. This is an amazing achievement – a huge congratulations, Gavin!
AMS Teaching Award
Gavin S. K. Lee
“Global Music History Course Design: A Pedagogical Toolbox with Syllabi” edited by Gavin S. K. Lee,Journal of Music History Pedagogy 14:1 (2024)
“…With this second special issue devoted to ‘Global Music History,’ the Journal of Music History Pedagogy responds to a widely felt need for practical resources to help teachers decolonize their courses. Guest editor Gavin S. K. Lee assuages any worry that teaching the global might require an encyclopedic knowledge of world traditions, advocating instead for a shift of perspective and providing a rigorous examination of both the ‘promises’ and ‘pitfalls’ of global music history in an insightful, field-defining introduction. Strong theoretical foundation underpins extensive pedagogical materials in each of the ensuing chapters—by Lee, Takao, Schofield, Bloechl, and Silpayamanant—which span six continents with detailed syllabi and thematic bibliographies amounting to almost 600 entries. Rooted in a ‘restorative’ ethics that undermines Eurocentrism and promotes a polycentric model of global history, these timely articles offer concrete resources to support the global transition in music history pedagogy.”
Philip Brett Award
Gavin S. K. Lee
“Hermeneutic Limits; or, When Not to Theorize: Notes for Interpreting Our Phoenix by Trans Indigenous Mexican-American Composer Mari Esabel Valverde,” Music Theory Spectrum 46:2 (Fall 2024)
“. . .In a moment when trans and queer of color musicians, and even music scholars, are facing increasing precarity and violence, Gavin S. K. Lee’s ‘Hermeneutic Limits; or, When Not to Theorize’ draws us into a vital conversation around music studies as a form of community care. Lee incisively explores the limits of using queer analytical frameworks to study trans music and trans artists’ material lives, proposing an ‘inclusive neopositivism’ that counterbalances the sometimes essentializing attention to anti-normativity among marginalized gendered and racialized music and performance. Lee’s adept analysis of Mari Esabel Valverde’s contemporary choral works offers critical tools for the rapidly growing areas of trans musicology and trans music theory, in addition to timely perspectives on how musicology might navigate ethics and inclusion.”
SEE THE FULL LIST OF AMS AWARD RECIPIENTS