Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Joan Titus

Professor in Musicology/Ethnomusicology

Email: j_titus@uncg.edu
Website

Appointed through Spring 2028

Joan Titus, Professor in Musicology/Ethnomusicology, holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Musicology with concentrations in Film Studies and Russian Studies from the Ohio State University; and a B.A. in Music History from the University of Arizona, with a minor in Art History. Her research topics include music in screen media, cultural politics, and music and gender. Cultural histories of Soviet film music, global identities in music and cinema, and sounding gender in film music are the current areas of her research.

Dr. Titus is currently working on several book projects on Russian cinema/sound/music, including a trilogy of books on Dmitry Shostakovich’s film music career. The first of these books, The Early Film Music of Dmitry Shostakovich(opens in new window) (Oxford University Press, 2016) examines narration and politics in Shostakovich’s early film scores. The next two books offer histories of Shostakovich as a case study for film music composition during Stalinism, and during the Thaw and Stagnation through 1971. She also has published on gender and Soviet film, post-Soviet film music, filmed opera, and indigenous music of the US. Dr. Titus is an active researcher and presenter in the US and abroad, and her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2017–2018), NEH Summer Stipend (2016), the AMS 75 PAYS Publication Subvention, multiple fellowships from the US Department of Education Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) in addition to other institutional awards.

Dr. Titus enjoys teaching a diverse range of graduate seminars and undergraduate courses on Russian and Soviet music, music and cinema, music and politics, music of the world, US indigenous musics, and music of the Western European/US elite traditions. She developed the undergraduate UNCG course “Music for Film.” She also currently serves as an editor for Musicology Now, the online platform for the American Musicological Society; curates the Irna Priore Music and Culture Lecture Series at UNCG; and is Chair of the CVPA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee (through 2021). She has served as co-president of the Sound and Music Studies SIG for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.