Collegiate Affiliation

Associate Professor: Music Theory

Sumanth Gopinath is Associate Professor of Music Theory. He is the author of The Ringtone Dialectic: Economy and Cultural Form (MIT Press, 2013). He co-edited, with Jason Stanyek, The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Rethinking Reich with Pwyll ap Siôn (Oxford University Press, 2019). His writings on Steve Reich, musical minimalism, Marxism and music scholarship, the Nike+ Sport Kit, the ringtone industry, Bob Dylan, and Benjamin Britten have appeared in various scholarly journals and edited collections. He is working on a book project on musical minimalism and is conducting research on sound in new and formerly new media, Bob Dylan's musicianship, the aesthetics of smoothness, and the music of the Scottish composer James Dillon. He is the leader of the independent Americana band The Gated Community.

Educational Background & Specialties
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Educational Background

  • Ph.D.: Music, Yale University, 2005
  • M.Ph.: Music, Yale University, 2001
  • B.S.: Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 1997

Specialties

  • Sound studies
  • Popular music
  • Musical hermeneutics
  • Music and politics
  • Avant-garde and experimental musics
  • Music after WWII
  • Music and globalization