My research focuses on the early modern period, particularly the sacred song in the Hispanic World and Italian opera. My current project analyzes the performance of sacred villancicos within the institutional and social fabric of Puebla de los Ángeles and develops a new methodology for the study of function, meaning, and transmission of the vernacular song tradition in the Spanish empire.
I am a musicologist from Mexico. I received my doctoral degree from Princeton University in 2018 and a master’s degree in music and religion from Yale University in 2010. I taught at Yale University (2018) and Rider University (2016, 2018) before coming to Bowdoin College.
Spring 2021 office hours: Monday, 3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday, 7:00 p.m.–7:30 p.m. by appointment.
“Poesía amatoria en la lírica devocional eucarística novohispana.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies (in print 2023).
“Native Song and Dance Affect in Novohispanic Christian Rituals.” InAcoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity, edited by Suzanne G. Cusick and Emily Wilbourne (Cambridge: OpenBook, 2021), 37-64. http://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0226
“Reconsideraciones historiográficas sobre el barroco para el estudio de la música virreinal.” InMúsicas coloniales a debate (1492-1898): procesos de intercambio euroamericanos, edited by Javier Marín-López (Madrid: Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales, 2018), 165-182.
“Vivaldi’s Motezuma: The Conquest of Mexico in the Venetian Operatic Stage.” InThe New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750, edited by Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2017), 288-308. http://doi.org/10.1017/9781316389034.016
“Love Poetry in Eucharistic Villancicos in Seventeenth-Century New Spain.” 21st Quinquennial Congress of the International Musicological Society, Athens, Greece (August 2022); Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University (April 2022).
“‘El galán enamorado’: Poesía amatoria en el villancico eucarístico novohispano,” Musicología en transición, X Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Musicología(SEdeM)”, Universidad Internacional de Andalucía (UIA), Baeza, Spain (November 2021).
“Songs in Nahuatl for Christian Rituals in Seventeenth Century New Spain,” Conference in Latin American History & American Historical Association Annual Meeting (New York, January 2020).
“Thomas Gage y la sensibilidad religiosa en el villancico novohispano,” Coloquio International Multidisciplinario Ignacio Jerusalem y su tiempo (Mexico City, November 2019); and Congreso Internacional Celebración y Sonoridad (Morelia, November 2019).
“Native Song and Dance Affect in Seventeenth-Century Christian Festivals in New Spain,” conference Atlantic Crossings: Music from 1492 through the long 18th-Century organized by the Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University (June 2019); and for the panel “Ceremony and Sensation: Music and Intercultural Rituals in Early America” for the Omohundro Institute Annual Conference (Pittsburg, June 2019).
“Pious Indians and Righteous Slaves in Seventeenth-Century Catholic Song,” Society for Seventeenth-Century Music (SSCM, Colorado Boulder, 2018).
“Indian Workers and Black Slaves as Models for Christian Piety in Christmas Villancicos from Puebla in the Early Seventeenth-Century,” American Musicological Society (AMS, Rochester, 2017).
“Redescubriendo el Nuevo Mundo: Narrativas de la música novohispana del siglo XVII,” International Conference “From New Spain to Mexico: The Mexican Musical Universe Between Centenaries (1517-1917), 1st Conference of the MUSAM Study Group of the Spanish Society of Musicology, Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, UIA Spain (Baeza, 2017).
“Un’altra Venezia nel mondo: Moctezuma y la Conquista de México según Vivaldi,” Convengno internazionale Gli Scambi musical fra Italia e Spagna nei secoli XVIII e XIX, Instituto Cervantes, (Rome, 2016).
“Vivaldi’s Motezuma: The Conquest of Mexico in the Venetian Operatic Stage,” Biannual Conference of the Society of Eighteenth-Century Music (SECM, Austin, 2016).
“La realidad divinizada: villancicos de Navidad y la inmanencia sagrada en Puebla de los Ángeles a inicios del siglo XVII,” International Conference New Perspectives on the Villancico and Related Genres in the Iberian World (15th-19th centuries), UIA Spain (Baeza, 2014).
“Divinizing Reality: Christmas Villancicos and the Culture of Sacred Immanence in Early 17th Century Puebla de los Ángeles,” AMS (Milwaukee, 2014).
“Listening for Nahua-Christian Identity in Christmas Songs from Seventeenth-Century New Spain.” Keynote address for the annual international conference Historical Performance: Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (May 2023).
“Performance of Blackness in Cathedral Villancicos.” Roundtable “Sounding/Voicing/ Embodying Blackness in the Early Modern Iberian World”, for the Second Annual Conference of the Black Sacred Arts, Yale University (May 2023).
“Spirituality in Song: Mexican Choirbooks of the Newberry Library,” Roundtable with Claudia Brittehnham and Ellen Hargis, Newberry Library (April 2023).
“Listening for Nahua-Christian Identity in Christmas Songs from Puebla de los Ángeles.
Musicology Colloquium, University of Notre Dame (April 2023).
Colloquium Series, Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University (April 2023).
“Sounds of Race in 17th century New Spain.” Musicology Forum Lecture and Early Modern Studies Institute, University of Southern California (January 2023).
“No vaya a Belén Angola, Negro a 4: Gaspar Fernández, Puebla 1611.” Interdisciplinary Symposium, Intersections: Black and Indigenous Sound in the Early Atlantic World, supported by the Omohundro Institute, the Washington University in St. Louis Humanities Center and Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity, hosted at the Virginia Commonwealth University (October 2022).
“Listening for Black Voices: A Conversation on Musicology Today,” Roundtable for the Colloquium Recovering Black Performance in Early Modern Iberia, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by Yale University (April 2022).
“Diversifying the Canon: Changing the Narrative,” a DEI Pedagogy Workshop co-organized with Erika Honisch (Stony Brook University), sponsored by the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, Society for Seventeenth-Century Music Annual Meeting, Delaware University (April 2022).
“Sounds of Race in Seventeenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles.” Musicology Colloquium Series, Northwestern University (April 2022).
“‘Turu lu neglo y nigliya vamo correndo adorá’: Sounds of Race in Seventeenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles”
Region and Enmity: A RaceB4Race Symposium, organized by Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, hosted by Rutgers University (October 2021).
Keynote address for the Spring Meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society, hosted by Yale University (April 2022).
Ovations Offstage Post-Performance Discussion (moderator), Sphinx Virtuosi Concert for Portland Ovations presented in partnership with Indigo Arts Alliance at the Merrill Auditorium (March 2022).
Radio interview for the program Dos Cuarenta y Cinco, Radio Universidad de Costa Rica (August 2021).
“Música(s) y Sociedad(es) en la Nueva España en los siglos XVI y XVII.” Seminario 500 años de música en México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (August 2021).
“Sor Juana y el convento como un espacio femenino alternativo.” Seminario 500 años de música en México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (August 2021).
Guest speaker for the Book Launch Party Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity (May 2021).
Guest speaker for the book presentation De Nueva España a México: El universo musical mexicano entre centenarios (1517-1917) (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, December 15, 2020).
Panelist respondent at the XV Coloquio de Estudiantes, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (December 2020).
“Reconciling Historical Narratives and Operatic Conventions in Vivaldi’s Motezuma,” Historical Performance Symposium (The Juilliard School, November 19, 2020).
“Tracing Indigenous and Black Resistance in New Spanish Devotional Songs,” Historical Performance Symposium (The Juilliard School, November 16, 2020).
“Los motetes para la Virgen de Guadalupe de Ignacio Jerusalem,” Conference series “20 Aniversario del Coro de Cámara UDLAP” (Universidad de las Américas Puebla, October 24, 2020).
Guest appearance for the segment on Puebla Cathedral for the episode “Latin America’s Turbulent Colonial History Told Through its Music,” The Early Music Show, BBC Radio 3, Oct 18, 2020.
“New Spain in the Age of Expansion: Early Manifestations of Musical Globalization” (NYU Florence-Villa La Pietra, 2018).
“Rediscovering the New World: Narratives of New Spanish Music in the Seventeenth Century.” Discussion panel for the Ibero-American Music Study Group, AMS (Rochester, 2017).
