Overview
Musicology
Dr. Trevor R. Nelson is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Wichita State University and a scholar interested in the connections between music, politics, and identity formation. Central to his work are questions of how music education practices and institutions contribute to and maintain historical inequities.
Dr. Nelson’s research centers the post-1945 British Commonwealth and how music informed globally minded Britishness. His book project, Let’s Make a Commonwealth: Musical Britishness at the Twilight of Empire, considers music as a form of educational media that teachers and broadcasters used to reform British identity in the wake of imperial decline. Other research interests include music education radio and television programs, children’s music cultures, and British opera. Dr. Nelson has presented his research at numerous regional, national and international conferences. He was the recipient of a WSU Research and Creative Activity Grant, the Charles Warren Fox Award, the T. Temple Tuttle Prize, the Glenn Watkins Dissertation Research Grant, and a Music & Letters Trust Grant, among others. Dr. Nelson’s writing has been published in Twentieth-Century Music, Ethnomusicology Review, Notes (here and here), and NABMSA Reviews (here and here), and his co-authored essay with Christina Baade will appear in the forthcoming volume Mass Observing the Coronation of Charles III: Monarchy, Spectacle and Experience.
In his teaching, Dr. Nelson empowers students to ask questions through modeling a diverse range of analytic frameworks. He has taught a range of survey and topical music history courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and for diverse student populations. Dr. Nelson partnered with the Rochester Education Justice Initiative to offer a course on American Popular Music at a prison in Western New York. For his teaching, Dr. Nelson has received numerous awards, including the University of Rochester’s Curtis Award, Eastman’s Diversity Award, Eastman’s TA Prize, and MSU’s Somers Award.
Bachelor of Music in music education - Appalachian State University
Graduate Certificate in women's & gender studies - Michigan State University
Master of Arts in musicology - Michigan State University
Doctor of Philosophy in musicology - Eastman School of Music, U. of Rochester