PhD Program Overview
The PhD program in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University is a transdisciplinary program centered on critical and applied approaches to the study of music and sound as central perspectives on human social life. We emphasize the social scientific tradition within ethnomusicology, and have extensive interdisciplinary dialogues with the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, popular culture studies, media studies, history, and sociology. We also focus on critical theory and on subjects such as modernity and tradition, nationalism and globalization, indigeneity, cultural rights, intellectual property rights, new media and technology, cultural policy, music and violence, music and gender, among other emphases which strengthen our relationships with other fields and disciplines. We emphasize rigorous, sustained field research as the basis of the discipline's unique contribution to musicology and social thought. Increasingly, we also emphasize applied, policy-oriented, public-facing, and collaborative approaches to ethnomusicological research.
The program is small and exceptionally communal. Approximately 12-15 students are in residence at any given time, with another few in the field, and we have produced approximately one or two Ph.D. graduates per year in recent years. In the past five years, graduate student research has been sponsored by the Fulbright Fellowship Program (Hays and IIE), The Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Korea Foundation, The Social Science Research Council (7 fellowship grants since 2001), The National Science Foundation, IREX, The Mellon Foundation (for Summer research grants), The Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education's Foreign Language Area Studies program, among others.We have the premier record among ethnomusicology programs in the United States for external funding of student field research. Recent and current students have worked in Senegal, Kenya, Ukraine, Togo, China, Korea, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mali, Nepal, The Republic of Georgia, the Czech Republic, Panama, Canada, and Argentina and at numerous sites around the United States. Our students present papers at national meetings on a regular basis, and frequently publish significant articles during their graduate school career.
Columbia graduates work at universities across the country and around the world, including the California State University/Monterey; Arizona State University; Western Carolina State University; Stony Brook University; The University of Chicago, Oklahoma University, The University of Tennessee, Evergreen College, Ramapo College, University of Richmond, University of California at Santa Barbara, Connecticut College, Ewha University (Korea), The Graduate Center of CUNY, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal), Bar-Ilan University (Israel), Reed College, The University of Toronto, University of Pittsburgh, The Ohio State University, Tulane University, The University of Hawai'i, and many other institutions. Our Ph.D. graduates have received several numerous post-doctoral fellowships as well, including Yale University, Kenyon College, Cambridge University (UK), Oxford University (UK), University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, New York University, and Columbia University, among others. Over the past decade our program has a placement rate of approximately 85% in tenure track jobs or postdoctoral fellowships (and usually both, in sequence) within 2 years of completing the PhD.
We do not offer a stand-alone MA. The PhD program includes MA and MPhil degrees in addition to the PhD. All applicants are assumed to be seeking the PhD.
The graduate program requires 3 years of coursework (30 credits for the MA plus 6 additional credits for the MPhil & PhD) for a total of 36 required credits, which includes a two-semester foundations proseminar sequence (intellectual history of the field and key ethnographic texts) and two-semester field methods seminar sequence (resulting in a Masters Thesis project based on fieldwork in New York City). We also require demonstrated competence in 2 languages (possibly a 3rd if the research requires 2 foreign languages), the completion of a rigorous sequence of exams prior to doctoral candidacy, 3 - 4 years appointed as teaching assistants or teaching fellows (in courses such as Asian Music Hum, Music Hum, etc.) and at least 1 year of full-time field research for the dissertation. In the 1st year, students will be on the Dean's Fellowship Funding so they can focus on course work and typically in the 5th year, students will be on Dissertation Fellowship so they can focus on writing (no teaching will be required during those 2 years).
All students (except those admitted with advanced standing) must complete an MA thesis based on substantial field research in New York City. Advanced standing, which exempts a student from one year of coursework and the MA thesis requirement, is only granted to students with Masters degrees from peer institutions, and who have completed a substantial ethnographic (fieldwork-based) thesis, equivalent to theses written in our program. Advanced standing is granted only on a case-by-case basis, and only after a student is enrolled in the program.
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences requires all students to complete the MA degree within two years of entering our program, and we observe this rule strictly unless there are significant mitigating circumstances (i.e. health or family emergencies necessitating a personal leave) along with strictly enforcing the requirement that the thesis be substantially finished (in near-final draft form) by the beginning of the first semester of year two. In most cases, students have met all requirements for the MA when they have completed the thesis. The emphasis of our program is on the PhD dissertation, and immediately upon completion of the MA thesis we expect students to turn their attention to the development of an original contribution to the scholarly literature that will be the foundation for their dissertation research. Indeed, we generally hope and expect that the MA project will lead the student, directly or indirectly, toward that project. The Department of Music website provides a detailed timeline and course breakdown for a PhD in Ethnomusicology. (insert link to music website)
In order to track student progress, beginning in the semester following the defense of students prospectus, students will have a Dissertation Progress Meeting once each semester with their advisor and at least one other faculty member, in order to receive timely feedback on their dissertation work and regular support throughout the dissertation-writing process.
PLEASE NOTE THAT A SUBSTANTIAL REVISION OF THESE REQUIREMENTS AND SEQUENCES, AND THOSE OF THE MUSIC DEPARTMENT, WAS APPROVED IN 2022. STUDENTS WHO ENTERED THE PROGRAM BEFORE 2022 ARE SUBJECT TO THE PRIOR REQUIREMENTS, BUT MAY OPT TO COMPLETE THEIR PROGRAMS UNDER THE NEW ONES IF APPROPRIATE.