The UMKC Conservatory welcomes Dr. Stewart Duncan, Assistant Teaching Professor of Musicology, Fall 2022. Dr. Duncan received his Ph.D. from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Musicology with a focus on music and politics in the early twentieth century. His work examines the political utility of choral singing in England in the 1930s, tracing how choral music served the needs of activists, governments, and musicians in interwar Britain. His broader research interests include music’s place within nationalism, politics, and power throughout the twentieth century, as well as the importance of canon and repertoire to nineteenth-century choral societies.
Stewart’s article “‘An Excellent Piece of Propaganda’: The British Council’s Use of Choirs as Cultural Diplomacy in the 1930s” appeared in The Musical Quarterly in 2022. He has presented research at meetings of the North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA) in 2018 and 2020. In 2022, he will present research on interwar choral singing and British antifascism at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the McGill University Music and Antifascism Symposium, and NABMSA.
A Liberty, MO native, Stewart graduated from William Jewell College in 2015 and has called Kansas City home for many years.
Welcome Dr. Duncan!