Rachel Mundy
email: rmm290@newark.rutgers.edu
Rachel Mundy is an Associate Professor of Music in the Arts, Culture, & Media program at Rutgers University in Newark. She specializes in twentieth-century sonic culture with interests at the juncture of music, the history of science, and animal studies. Her work shows how music has been used to navigate changing boundaries between race, species, and culture during a century of social and ecological crisis.
Rachel’s work has been cited as initiating an “animal turn” in music studies. She has published widely and given invited talks for audiences at institutions including Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Eastman, and Lincoln Center.
Rachel locates herself within a broad movement in the arts and sciences towards new ideas about human identity, nature, and culture in an era of social and ecological crisis. Her classes explore sound in the history of science, animals and posthumanism, Newark’s soundscapes, and Western traditions in a global context. Rachel is also a licensed teacher of the Japanese traditional flute or shakuhachi, which she has played and performed since 2001.
Education
BA in music, Wesleyan University 2000
MM in music history, Hartt School of Music, 2003
PhD in music studies, New York University 2010
