Virginia E. Whealton

Virginia E. Whealton is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at Texas Tech University and is affiliated faculty with the Department of History and with the Women's and Gender Studies program. A scholar of nineteenth-century music, her research focuses on two areas: 1) Parisian music, specifically on Romantic musicians' travel writings and travel-inspired compositions, and their role in shaping musicians' public image and construction of European identity; and 2) musical life and collectorship in early nineteenth-century Norfolk, Virginia, and their intersection with gender, Jewish identity, urbanization, and the politics of the Early Republic.

As a musicologist and cultural historian, Dr. Whealton presents regularly at conferences across the United States, Canada, and Europe, as well as in forums that engage the broader public. Her writing and archival research in Europe and the United States have been supported by a series of grants, including a Mellon Innovating International Research and Teaching Fellowship, a Bartlet Grant from the American Musicological Society, and awards from the American Council for Polish Culture and the Polish American Arts Association. During the 2022–2023 academic year, she is a Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellow with the American Association of University Women:

https://ww3.aauw.org/aauw_check/fellowships_directory/#rid6893

At Texas Tech, she has taught survey courses for graduate and undergraduate music majors, as well as special topics courses on a variety of subjects, including music in Paris, disability, and pedagogy. She is a 2021 recipient of the Professing Excellence award at Texas Tech University. Since 2020, she has served as co-host of the Musicology Division's Colloquium. She currently is in her second elected term as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, which serves Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

A Virginian, she maintains her links to the Hampton Roads area by serving on the advisory board of the Bay Youth Orchestras of Virginia and by researching the Moses Myers Music Collection at the Chrysler Museum of Art. Her calico cat, Mylena, serves as her senior research assistant.

Recent Publications

“Polski Patriota w Paryżu: Wojciech (Albert) Sowiński, Eseista, Antologisa i Leksykograf” [A Polish Patriot in Paris: Albert Sowinski, Scholar and Critic], Studia Chopinowskie 6 (2020):50–76.

“Transformed Abruzzi: Berlioz's Harold en Italie as Récit de voyage,” in Symphonism in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. José Ignacio Suárez García and Ramón Sobrino, Speculum Musicae (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming, December 2019), 43–66, ISBN 978-2-503-58643-4.

“Franz Liszt's Album d'un voyageur: Music, Memorials, and the Anthropocene,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 41(2019):543–63.

Courses Taught

MUHL  3303 (formerly MUHL 2301) Music History II: Bach to Brahms

MUHL 4300 Music and Disability

MUHL 4300/5320 Great Musicians in Paris

MUHL 4300/5320 Music and Nationalism

MUHL 5334 Classic Music

MUHL 4300/5335 Romantic Music

MUHL 4300/5311 Symphonic Literature

MUHL 5300 Graduate Music History Survey

MUSI 5320 Introduction to Musicology

MUHL 5306 Pedagogy of Music History

MUSI 7000 Research

Degrees

PhD in Musicology, Indiana University—Bloomington

MA in Musicology, Indiana University—Bloomington

Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance, summa cum laude with major honors in music, Houghton College