School of Music

Bio

Sarah F. Williams specializes in early modern (c. 1580-1650) English music and culture including seventeenth-century popular music, theatrical music and broadside balladry. Her work focuses on musical representations of witchcraft and magic, economies of gender in early modern European culture, the 16th- and 17th-century English cheap print trade, as well as emo rock and expressions of masculinity in contemporary American popular music. She holds Ph.D. and M.M. degrees in historical musicology from Northwestern University and a B.A. in Literary Studies and Piano Performance from Beloit College (Beloit, Wis.). 

Dr. Williams' book, Witches and Dangerous Women in Early Modern English Broadside Balladry and Popular Song is forthcoming with Ashgate Press (Farnham, UK). Her publications have appeared in several top-tier musicology and humanities journals as well as essay collections published by Ashgate, Brill, the University of Indiana Press, and Routledge. She has presented papers at numerous history, literary studies, and musicological conferences throughout the United States and Europe and was a selected participant in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2005 Faculty Seminar on early modern English music in Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Williams teaches undergraduate music history and graduate seminars in renaissance and baroque music history in the School of Music and serves as affiliate faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the Women's Museum of California (formerly the San Diego Women’s History Museum and Educational Center) from 2006-2007. She is a member of the Society for Seventeenth Century Music, the American Musicological Society, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Shakespeare Association of America. 

Education

Ph.D. Northwestern University (historical musicology)
M.M. Northwestern University (historical musicology)
B.A. Beloit College (Piano Performance/Literary Studies)

Areas of Specialization

• 16th and 17th century music and culture
• Witchcraft and magic
• Gender Studies
• Popular music

Courses Taught

• MUSC 744 - Music and Culture in Tudor England
• MUSC 744 - “Rebels and Heirs”: The Two English Renaissances
• MUSC 744/WGST 796 - Gender Perspectives on Baroque Opera: Monteverdi through Handel
• MUSC 744 - Contemporary American Popular Music (1900s-1950s)
• MUSC 744 - Music and Magic
• MUSC 744 - Benjamin Britten and the English Musical Past
• MUSC 755 - Music of the Renaissance
• MUSC 756 - Music of the Baroque Era
• MUSC 353 - History of Western Music I
• MUSC 354 - History of Western Music II
• MUSC 455 - History of Western Music III

Research

• Tudor-Stuart music and culture
• 17th century popular music, broadside balladry, and print culture
• Gender studies
• Early modern English witchcraft
• Baroque opera
• American popular music, expressions of masculinity in post-1980 punk rock

Selected Publications

• (forthcoming book) Witches and Dangerous Women in Early Modern English 
Broadside Balladry and Popular Song (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press, 2014).

• (forthcoming article) "To the Tune of Witchcraft: Witchcraft, Popular Song,
and the early modern English broadside ballad." Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 19 (2013).

• "'A Swearing and Blaspheming Wretch': Representing Witchcraft and Excess
in Early Modern English Broadside Balladry and Popular Song." Journal of
Musicological Research 30/4 (2011): 309-356.

• Patrick Spedding and Paul Watt, eds., Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period, 4 vols.
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011), Journal of the American Musicological Society (2012).

• (chapter forthcoming) "Witches, Lamenting Women, and Cautionary Tales: Tracing
'The Ladies Fall' in Early Modern English Broadside Balladry and Popular Song." In
Gender in Early Modern English Song, ed. Leslie Dunn and Katie Larson
(Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press).

• “Emo.” In The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, vol.
8, ed. John Shepherd, David Horn, & Dave Laing (London: Continuum Press,
2011), 201-203.

• “Hardcore.” In The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World,
vol. 8, ed. John Shepherd, David Horn, & Dave Laing (London: Continuum
Press, 2011), 257-260.

• “‘Singe the Enchantment for Sleepe’: Music and bewitched sleep in early
modern English drama.” In Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle
Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Christine Göttler and
Wolfgang Neuber (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 179-196.

• “‘A Walking Open Wound’: Emo rock and the ‘crisis’ of masculinity in
America.” In Oh boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music, ed. Freya
Jarman-Ivens (New York & London: Routledge, 2007), 145-160.

Awards and Honors

• National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, 2010
• Provost’s Humanities Grant, 2010
• American Musicological Society, Jan La Rue Award for Research Travel, 2009
• Josephine Abney Faculty Fellowship Award (Women's and Gender Studies Program), 2009