Awards
The Society for Eighteenth-Century Music has established funds to support student work in topics on music in the eighteenth century. Please see below for information on the awards, the application process and lists of past winners.
The Sterling E. Murray Award for Student Travel
The Murray Award supports student travel to the Society’s biannual meetings. For more details, including how to apply, click here.
Past Winners
- 2023: Denton, TX
- Megan Kiel (Austin College)
- 2022: Salzburg, joint with Mozart Society of America
- Mitia Ganade D’Acol (Indiana University)
- 2021: Virtual Conference
- Ashley Greathouse (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music)
- Nathaniel Mitchell (Princeton University)
- Holly Roberts (University of Oregon)
- Morton Wan (Cornell University)
- 2018: Tallahassee, FL
- Michael Vincent (University of Florida)
- 2016: Austin, TX
- Bethany Cencer (Stony Brook University)
- Anna Parkitna (Stony Brook University)
- Adam Shoaff (University of Cincinnati)
- 2014: Bethlehem, PA
- Sarah Bushey (University of Florida)
- Evan Cortens (Cornell University)
- 2012: Charleston, SC
- Erick Arenas (Stanford University)
- Alison DeSimone (University of Michigan)
- Kimary Fick (University of North Texas)
- John Romey (Case Western Reserve University)
Student Paper Prize
This award is given to the best student paper read at a biennial meeting of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music. The winner is chosen by the program committee, and students must submit their papers in advance to be considered.
Past Winners
- 2023: Denton, TX
- Aimee Brown (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney)
- 2022: Salzburg, joint with Mozart Society of America
- [No prize awarded in 2022]
- 2021: Virtual Conference
- Callum Blackmore (Columbia University)
- 2018: Tallahassee, FL
- Halvor Hosar (University of Auckland)
- 2016: Austin TX
- Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska (Northwestern University)
- 2014: Bethlehem, PA
- Devin Burke (Case Western Reserve University)
- 2012: Charleston, SC
- Dianne Goldman (Northwestern University)
- 2010: Brooklyn, NY
- Lisa de Alwis (University of Southern California)
The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Award
This award recognizes a graduate student who is currently working on a thesis or dissertation on topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility in eighteenth-century music scholarship. For more details, including how to apply, click here.
Past Winners
- 2024
- Paul Feller (Northwestern University). The SECM is pleased to present the DEIA Award to Paul Feller for his dissertation, “Jewish Musicianship, Cultural Mobility, and Jewish-Christian Exchanges in the Northwestern Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands (ca. 1650–1750).” By elevating the voices and experiences of otherwise marginalized figures in the dominant discourse across this century, Feller seeks to challenge the previously-held traditional narrative that “perpetuates dangerous ideas about Jewishness as a mark of absolute difference…by showing that the ordinary musical activities of members of the Jewish communities reveal a rich transregional system of exchanges between Jews and Christians that calls into question conventional notions of cultural isolation.” Feller’s work draws on substantial primary manuscript and print sources to reconstruct Jewish-Christian exchanges while employing an interdisciplinary approach that speaks to both musicological and Jewish studies.
- Peter Kohanski (University of North Texas). The SECM is pleased to present the DEIA Award to Peter Kohanski for his dissertation, “Sounding Britain, Crafting Self: Handel, the Imperial Experience, and Eighteenth-Century Lives of Empire.” Kohanski’s work provides an innovative model for how to understand the reception of a canonic eighteenth-century composer from a more global perspective. He uses a novel biographical approach to show how “gendered, racialized, and generational experiences of empire conditioned perspectives on Handel's music in eighteenth-century Calcutta and Philadelphia.” In doing so, Kohanski sheds light on previously unacknowledged marginalized voices for whom Handel’s music held meaning.
- 2022
- Wayne A. Weaver (Cambridge University). The SECM is pleased to present its inaugural DEIA Award to Wayne Weaver (Cambridge University) for his dissertation, “Space, Race & Music in Late 18th-Century Kingston, Jamaica.” Weaver’s important and ambitious project reconstructs the sonic landscape of the Caribbean city, considering the contributions of Euro-colonial composers (principally, the organist Samuel Felsted), as well as the African and African-descended musicians who engaged these repertoires. Drawing on an impressive range of sources (including memoirs, periodicals, iconography, and ceremonial programming), Weaver demonstrates how cultural activity was instrumental to the construction of white Jamaican identity—while critically addressing the ways that enslaved and free people of color, both willingly and unwillingly, took part in this process.