Alexander W. Cowan

[Presented at the “Sonic Circulations” conference, 2018.] Abstract: In 1923 the psychologist of music Carl E. Seashore gave a speech to the International Congress of Eugenics in New York, in which he spoke enthusiastically of the musical possibilities afforded by the burgeoning sciences of race and heredity. To an audience of scientists and wealthy industrialists—the…

[Presented at the 2021 meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, online.] Abstract: A recent book by Richard Lynn, mentor to Bell Curve author Charles Murray and arguably the world’s foremost race scientist, cites several ethnomusicologists. Lynn uses a series of studies on musical ability, conducted between 1928 and 1981, to make an argument common in…

[Presented at the 2021 meeting of the American Musicological Society, online.] Abstract: Francis Galton (1822–1911), cousin to Charles Darwin and founder of the discipline of eugenics, does not feature prominently in the intellectual history of music studies. Music, however, did feature prominently in his work. From his first eugenic writings to his death, Galton made…

[Presented at the 2021 meeting of the Modern Language Association] Abstract: Francis Galton is best remembered as coiner of the word “eugenics” and its chief proponent in the later nineteenth century. But toward the end of his life, he harbored another ambition: novelist. His 1910 unpublished manuscript The Eugenic College of Kantsaywhere lays out, in…

Presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Boston, MA. The paper’s theoretical frame ended up differing a little from the submitted abstract; and I’m more than happy to share the typescript upon request. Abstract: In fall 2018, the music streaming service Spotify partnered with genealogy website Ancestry.com to turn results…