Email and Mail Voting

DEADLINE FOR SPRING 2008 ELECTION:
Vote must be received by 11:59 PM (Eastern Standard Time) on Thursday, 24 April 2008.

Dear Member of the Midwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society,

Listed below are the names of two candidates for the positions of Chapter Representative and President. Members in good standing may vote once by e-mail or mail. Send a ballot via e-mail to the Chapter Secretary Stephanie Schlagel <amsmidwestsecretary@umich.edu> or via U.S. mail to College-Conservatory of Music / University of Cincinnati / Cincinnati, OH 45221-0003. Members may also vote if they are present at the business meeting at the Spring Conference in Kalamazoo on Saturday, April 26. Short biographical sketches of all candidates as well as vision statements from the presidential nominees are appended below.

2008 AMS MIDWEST CHAPTER BALLOT
(copy and paste the text below into your email, mark your selections, and send to amsmidwestsecretary@umich.edu)
Please include the text "AMS Midwest Vote" in your subject line.

Chapter President (2-year term), vote for one

___ C. Matthew Balensuela (DePauw University)

___ Elinor Olin (National-Louis University)

Chapter Representative (to the AMS Council, 2-year term), vote for one

___ David Kidger (Oakland University)

___ Eftychia Papanikolaou (Bowling Green State University)

Email your votes to <amsmidwestsecretary@umich.edu> For information on paying dues, please click here. If you submit a vote, but have not paid this year's dues, you will receive a dues reminder from Chapter Treasurer Jessie Fillerup. You may pay dues via Paypal or U.S. mail. If paid before the spring meeting, your vote will count.

Nominees for President:


C. Matthew Balensuela is currently an Associate Professor of Music History at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He graduated from the JuilliardSchool with a degree in saxophone performance, earned two master’s degrees (woodwind performance and music history) from Bowling Green StateUniversity, and received his Ph.D. from Indiana University. His main area of research is the history of music theory in the Medieval and Renaissance eras. He is the co-author with David Russell Williams of Music Theory from Boethius to Zarlino (Pendragon). His edition of the Ars cantus mensurabilis mensurata per modos iuris was published by the University of Nebraska Press. His research has also appeared in the New Grove Dictionary, A Reader’s Guide to Music, and Acta musicologica and he has presented papers to the American and International Musicological Societies. An area of particular interest has been the use of legal terminology in music theory texts and these studies have appeared in Rivista Internazionale di Dritto Comune and Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law. As a performer, he plays regularly in the Terre Haute area on saxophone, clarinet, and flute and maintains a small private teaching studio. For the AMS Midwest chapter he has served as AMS Council Representative (2006–9), Secretary (2001–3), and as a member of the Program Committee (2004–5).

Balensuela Vision Statement:
As president of the AMS Midwest Chapter, my vision would be (1) to expand the opportunity for involvement of musicologists in the region, (2) maintain and strengthen the numerous programs the chapter currently undertakes and (3) look for opportunities to meet with other regional chapters of learned societies in music. The primary responsibility of the President of the Chapter should be to encourage as many musicologists as possible to participate in the activities of the chapter as possible. I would propose that we consider a membership drive targeted to a specific, number, say 5% above our current membership. The AMS Midwest should consider an incentive each year (like a public radio station fund drive), such as an iPod shuffle giveaway (with “AMS Midwest” engraved on it) for one new or renewing member each year (currently selling for $49.00). We should also distribute advertising flyers as PDFs along with the electronically distributed Newsletter so that every chapter member could encourage their students and colleagues to join the chapter. The flyer should list the prizes for best student papers and recent Keynote speakers in the new member publicity to make the meetings appealing to scholars of all levels. Apart from increasing membership, I think the vision of the chapter president should be to maintain the high degree of excellence the chapter currently enjoys. We are able to provide two full conferences a year of engaging and insightful scholarship. The invited keynote speaker to the program is an excellent way to involve senior faculty. Our web page and electronic distribution of the newsletter are excellent uses of technology. Overall, I feel the Midwest chapter is in excellent shape and the next president must maintain the excellence we have achieved. One area I think we might want to explore is to have an occasional joint meeting with another regional chapter of a learned society related to music. A joint meeting with concurrent sessions, shared keynote speaker, and joint sessions on certain topics would give our members a wonderful opportunity to interact with other musical scholars and make the meetings attractive to a wide range of music scholars. As president, I would propose the chapter make contact with some of these other chapters to see if such a meeting is possible.

Elinor Olin holds a B.M. in Flute Performance from the University of the Pacific and an M.M and Ph.D. in Music History from Northwestern University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Music in the Fine Arts Department at National-Louis University. Dr. Olin’s research focuses on melodrama, 19th-century opera, and cultural nationalism in France. She has written articles for Nineteenth Century Music, The Reader's Guide to Music: History, Theory and Criticism, The Journal of Musicological Research, The Music Reference Quarterly, and publications of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Dr. Olin has read papers to the American Musicological Society, Ars Musica Chicago and presented lectures for Grant Park Music Festival and the education corps of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She has served as an officer for the Midwest American Musicological Society, and is program annotator for Music in the Loft, a concert organization founded to encourage and promote the careers of young professional musicians. An active chamber music performer, Dr. Olin is a founding member of the quartet Diletto Musicale.

Olin Vision Statement:
In 2004, the AMS Board of Directors convened the Committee on Membership and Professional Development, with the charge to gather information and respond to the needs of members, whatever their professional status and to “address the effects of professional, economic, and demographic changes” in AMS membership. As one of the original members of the committee, I became convinced that the Society’s mission to encourage "research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship" must be rooted in the strength of its regional chapters. Active participation from a broad spectrum of musicians and scholars in the Midwest, in all stages of their respective careers, is crucial to the vigor and wellbeing of both the Society and society as a whole. Promoting expanded membership in the AMS Midwest Chapter, as well as ongoing participation from our present constituents, will result in the most worthy and stimulating exchange of ideas. Additionally, the Chapter needs to function more fully in the electronic era. Investigating the most efficient means to store and provide access to information – for members and anyone interested in our mission – must be a priority.

Nominees for Chapter Representative:

David Kidger is Associate Professor of Musicology at the Department of Music, Theatre and Dance, at Oakland University (Rochester, MI) where he is coordinator of the Undergraduate and Graduate Music History area. Originally from London, England, he holds a MA degree in Musicology from theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, and a Ph.D. degree in Musicology from Harvard University. >From 2004 to 2006 he also taught for the Harvard University Summer School. His main research publication to date is in the Garland/Routledge Composer Research Guide series, Adrian Willaert: A Guide to Research, published in 2004. His edition C.P.E. Bach: 4 Symphonies for 12 Obbligato Parts, published in 2005, was the first volume in the new complete works edition of C.P.E. Bach. He edited the Complete Works of Petrus de Domarto for Antico Edition, and his edition of De Domarto's Missa Spiritus Almus was used for the recording by the Binchois Consort, directed by Andrew Kirkman. He has presented research papers nationally and internationally at musicology conferences, including the American Musicological Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the International Musicological Society, the Annual Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, and the Royal Musical Association. He has published reviews in Renaissance Quarterly, Early Music, and Music and Letters, and has written program notes for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has served on the joint AMS/RISM/MLA Committee as an AMS representative. He has also served on the program committee for theMidwest chapter of the America Musicological Society since Fall 2006.

Eftychia Papanikolaou is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Bowling Green State University. She holds a B.A. in English Philology and Literature from the University of Athens, Greece, Music Theory Degrees from the National Conservatory of Athens, and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Historical Musicology from Boston University. Her principal research focuses on the interconnections of music, religion, and politics in the long nineteenth century, with emphasis on the sacred as a musical topos. Her reviews and articles have appeared in Prism(s): Essays in Romanticism, Naturlaut, Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography, the Journal of Political and Military Sociology (Music and Politics issue), MLA Notes, and the German Studies Review. Other research interests include music and film, and ballet studies. Her essay “Identity and Ethnicity in Peter Gabriel’s Sound Track for The Last Temptation of Christ” has appeared in Scandalizing Jesus?: Kazantzakis’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” Fifty Years On (2005); and “Of Duduks and Dylan: Negotiating Music and the Aural Space” was included in an interdisciplinary collection titled Cylons in America: Critical Studies in “Battlestar Galactica” (2007). She is currently writing a monograph on the genre of the Romantic Symphonic Mass.

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