The University of Georgia Musicology/Ethnomusicology Student Association will host the first annual Southern Graduate Music Research Symposium August 27-28, 2010 at the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music. The two-day symposium will begin with a panel on Friday, Aug. 27 at 5:30 pm in Edge Recital Hall in the Hodgson School of Music; all symposium events are free and the public is invited to attend.

A collaborative event organized by and for graduate students, the mission of the symposium is to support graduate student research in music and to foster a collegial research environment among regional schools in the South. This year’s event includes participants from Florida State University, University of Georgia, and University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Topics at the conference range from the scientific impulse in aesthetics to the rock group Jethro Tull to “insurgent country music.”

The keynote speaker for the symposium will be Montgomery Wolf on Friday, Aug. 27 at 7 p.m. in Edge Hill. A lecturer in the UGA department of history, Wolf’s research interests include U.S. cultural history, popular music and consumer culture. The title of her talk is “Personality Crisis: Punk Rock and the 1970’s Revolution of Self.”

“The variety of musicological and ethnomusicological scholarship going on in our region is impressive, as the program for the symposium demonstrates,” said Nancy Riley, a doctoral student in the Hodgson School of Music and president of the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Student Association (MESA). “This event is a great opportunity for graduate students to come together, share some of our work, and get to know others in the field.”

The program for the symposium is available here.