Department of Music

Biography

A music historian who works across disciplines and creative practices Bonnie Gordon has published widely on Early Modern music and gender and Early American Sound. Her latest book Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano and other strange sounds was published in 2023.  Monteverdi’s Unruly Women appeared in 2004 and The Courtesans Arts; a co-edited essay collection appeared in 2006.  She is currently working on a new book on sound in Early America. A 2024 Shannon fellow at UVa, she  is a founding faculty member of the Equity Center at UVa and a co-director of the Sound Justice lab and a co-founder of C-Ville Tulips. In the music department she teaches classes on music history, noise, gender, race, and history as storytelling. She has also taught in the Engagements and the Pavilion Seminars and frequently offers classes focused on community engagements. Outside of the classroom she works with students in a variety of community engagement/public service programs. In addition to her scholarly writing, she has contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate and the C-ville Weekly. She plays jazz, rock, and classical viola. She is the recipient of a dissertation grant from the American Association of University Women, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brandeis University, a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She has also been the Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She plays Rock, Jazz and Classical Viola.