Alexander W. Cowan is a musicologist at the University of Chicago.
His research broadly considers the politics of musical knowledge in the first half of the 20th century. His book project, Unsound: A Cultural History of Music and Eugenics, explores the history of the idea of innate musical ability, and reveals its use as a tool of eugenics movements in Britain and the United States.
His work has been supported by the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, the Charles Warren Center for American Studies, and the Harvard Center for European Studies. He has previously held a Graduate Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and an honorary Alvin H. Johnson AMS-50 Dissertation Fellowship from the American Musicological Society. In 2017, he received the Paul A. Pisk Prize for outstanding graduate student paper at the American Musicological Society’s Annual Meeting, and in 2024 his dissertation was awarded an honorable mention from the International Musicological Society’s Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Alexander W. Cowan 