Michelle Meinhart
Professorial Staff - Academic Studies
Music
Tel: +44 (0)2083054396
Email: M.Meinhart@trinitylaban.ac.uk
Biography
Michelle joined the Faculty of Music at Trinity Laban in 2017 and teaches on a variety of BMus, MMus, and FCM modules related to music, history and culture. She is also the programme tutor for CPMM. She was formerly a Fulbright Scholar at Durham University and taught previously at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Xavier University, and Martin Methodist College. Michelle holds a PhD in musicology, with a cognate in British literature, from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and also holds a MMus in music history and a BMUS in piano performance. Michelle has also worked as a professional pianist and piano teacher.
Michelle’s research focuses on music and memory in Britain from the nineteenth century to today, with special attention to trauma, gender and print culture. Currently she is completing a monograph titled Music, Healing, and Memory in the English Country House, 1914-1919 (Oxford University Press), and her edited collection A Great Divide? Music, Britain and the First World War is forthcoming with Routledge. She is also working on a project on the soundscapes of maternity, including an article titled ‘Contractions, Calls, and Cries during COVID: The Traumatic Soundscapes of Lockdown UK Hospital Maternity Wards’ for a special issue of Women and Music, which she is co-editing. Her previous work has been published in The Journal of the Royal Musical Association, The Journal of Musicological Research, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and various edited collections, on topics from shell shock, trauma theory and mourning to motherhood; women’s magazines, travel writing, diaries and music collections; and opera.
In addition to Fulbright, her research has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Association of University Women, Music and Letters Trust, English Speaking Union, and Presser Foundation. In 2014, she was a fellow at the National Endowment for the Humanities research institute, “World War I and the Arts: Sound, Vision, Psyche.”
She has been involved in organising international conferences, including ‘Music, Sound and Trauma: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ (virtual, Indiana University, 2021); North American British Music Studies Association (Utah State University, 2018); ‘A “Great Divide” or a Longer Nineteenth Century? Music, Britain, and the First World War’ and ‘Conflict, Healing, and the Arts in the Long Nineteenth Century’ (both at Durham University in 2017). She has presented her work at and organised panels for conferences throughout Europe and North America, including annual meetings of the Royal Musical Association and the American Musicological Society.
Michelle is also the editor for NABMSA Reviews and serves on Fulbright reading and interview panels. She holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
Qualifications and Educational Background
Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, 2020
Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, 2018
Fulbright Scholar, Department of Music and Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Durham University, 2016-2017
PhD in Musicology (cognate: British literature), University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 2013
Master of Music in Music History, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 2003
Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and Pedagogy (Highest Honours), Eastern Illinois University, 2000
Journal Articles
‘Contractions, Calls, and Cries during COVID: The Traumatic Soundscapes of Lockdown
UK Hospital Maternity Wards’ Women and Music, forthcoming 2022.
“Soundscapes of Shell Shock in The Hydra, Journal of the Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, 1916-18.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review special issue, “Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century,” co-edited with Jillian Rogers, forthcoming.
“Introduction: Theorising Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century”. Nineteenth-Century Music Review special issue, “Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century,” co-edited with Jillian Rogers, forthcoming.
“Oh, What a Musical War! A Retrospective after the First World War Centenary”,
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 146/ ( 2021).
“Memory, Music, and Private Mourning in an English Country House during the First World
War: Lady Alda Hoare’s Musical Shrine to a Lost Son.” Journal of Musicological Research Vol. 31/ 1-3, “Music and World War I.” (March 2014): 39-95.
Book Chapters
“Introduction: Negotiating the ‘Great Divide’ of the First World War through Music.” In A Great Divide or a Long Nineteenth Century: Music, Britain and the First World War, ed. Michelle Meinhart, Routledge, forthcoming 2020.
“Music, Work, and Wartime ‘Angel in the House.’” In A Great Divide or a Long Nineteenth Century: Music, Britain and the First World War, ed. Michelle Meinhart, Routledge, forthcoming 2020.
“‘Society News,’ Opera, and The Lady Magazine, 1880-1914.” In Opera and Print Culture
in Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. Alison Mero and Christina Fuhrmann. Clemson University Press, 2021.
“Tommy Music Critics, an Unlikely Community, and The Longleat Lyre During World War I.” In Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I, ed. Christina Bashford, William Brooks, and Gayle Sherwood Magee. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
“Variations on the Grand Tour: Musical Seduction and Catholic Communion in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Italian Travel Diaries of Lady Anne Noel Blunt.” In Perplext in Faith: Essays on Victorian Beliefs and Doubts, ed. Alisa Clapp-Itnyre and Julie Melnyk, 168-207. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015.
Edited Journal Issues
“Soundscapes of Maternity”, special issue, Women and Music, co-edited with Erin Johnson-Williams, 2021.
“Music and Trauma in the Long Nineteenth Century,” special issue, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, co-edited with Jillian Rogers (Indiana University), forthcoming 2020.
Edited Collections:
A Great Divide or a Long Nineteenth Century: Music, Britain and the First World War, Routledge, 2021.
Book Reviews
Review of Lateness and Modernism: Untimely Ideas about Music, Literature and Politics in Interwar Britain by Sarah Collins. Context: Journal of Music Research 46 (2020): 113-117.
Review of Singing in the Age of Anxiety: Lieder Performances in New York and London Between the World Wars by Laura Tunbridge. Notes (Dec. 2019):
Review of The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain During the First World War by
John Mullen. Nineteenth-Century Music Review (Dec. 2016): 1-4.
Review of Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour
of Nicholas Temperley, edited by Bennett Zon. Notes 70/1 (Sept. 2013): 96.
Review of The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney: Music and Society in Late Eighteenth-
Century England, edited by Philip Olleson. North American British Music Studies Association Newsletter. (Fall 2013).