Integrating the study of early music, book history, and religious studies, my interdisciplinary research concerns early modern print culture and the pedagogical role of music in the formation of religious identity, particularly in Reformation England. As a cultural historian of music, I draw on the history of religion and the methodologies of book history to investigate the cultural work performed by printed collections of music in early modern England. My work intersects with both the history of the book and the history of reading, and thus extends attention both to the materiality of music prints and the readers who engaged with them, their perspectives and identities, and their performing bodies. Practically speaking, this entails extensive archival research examining paratextual features, the mechanics of music typesetting, and reader interaction with book copies as seen through manuscript annotations and corrections. Much of my work to date has focused on the cultural impact of printed music in sixteenth-century England on Protestant religious life through close study of the English Reformation’s primary hymnal, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, culminating in my first monograph (in progress), Reading The Whole Booke of Psalmes, which examines the WBP from the perspective of book history and the history of reading. Concurrent with the completion of this first monograph, I am in the archival research stage of my second book project, Printed Music and its Readers in Sixteenth-Century England. Expanding my focus beyond the WBP, this project investigates paratextual features, manuscript annotations, and corrections in all other books of music printed in sixteenth-century England. My goal is to understand how the English populace interacted with these material objects, and how English music printing itself was a force that both reflected and shaped its society.

You can read more about my publications, my dissertation, my other ongoing projects, and my recent conference papers on the pages found under the drop-down menu or by clicking the links.