Alexander W. Cowan

Musicologist

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  • The Mismeasure of Music: Eugenics, Marketing, and the Science of Musical Ability

    [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 […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    April 20, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Musical Selection: Eugenics, Ethnomusicology, and the Right

    [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 […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    April 20, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Hearing “Hereditary Genius”: Musicality and the Rhetorical Foundations of Eugenics

    [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 […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    April 20, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Francis Galton’s Singing Eutopia: Music, Vitality, and Sexuality in The Eugenic College of Kantsaywhere (1910)

    [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 His 1910 unpublished manuscript The Eugenic College of Kantsaywhere lays out, in […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    April 20, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Spotify, Ancestry.com, and the Fortunes of Race Science in the Twenty-First Century

    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 […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    November 4, 2019
    Uncategorized
  • Eugenics at the Eastman School: Music Psychology and the Racialization of Musical Talent

    Presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Rochester, NY. I’m happy to share the typescript of this talk: please get in touch via email! 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 […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    November 7, 2017
    presentation
  • American Lulu?

    (Originally published 21/09/2013.) American Lulu is difficult. Difficult in the way that Brechtian theatre is meant to be difficult: it is alienating, obtuse, sometimes crude, sometimes absurd. Difficult in the way that Berg’s opera too is difficult: in its jarring musical language, in its mere semblance of narrative; in its unnerving portrayal of the Male Gaze’s […]

    Alexander W. Cowan

    July 25, 2015
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