Dr. Stewart Duncan joined the musicology faculty at UMKC in 2022. His work examines the political utility of choral singing in England in the early twentieth century, 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. Dr. Duncan received his Ph.D. from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Musicology in 2022.
Upcoming projects include chapters in edited collections published by Oxford University Press and Routledge. His chapter “Musical Inscriptions in ‘The World’s Most Notable Collection of Autographs’: Charity, Memory, and the British Legion Album of 1924” will appear in Music in Albums: Albums as a Transnational Practice, edited by Henrike Rost and Halina Goldberg. His chapter “Antifascist Singing in Interwar England: Alan Bush, the Workers’ Music Association, and Handel’s Belshazzar” will appear in Music and Antifascism: Past and Present, edited by James Wright and Allyson Rogers. His current monograph project is titled Identity, Politics, and Choral Singing in Interwar Britain.
Earlier work includes the article “‘An Excellent Piece of Propaganda’: The British Council’s Use of Choirs as Cultural Diplomacy in the 1930s” which appeared in The Musical Quarterly in 2022, book reviews contributed to Notes and Current Musicology, and the online article “Bringing Political Song to the Masses: The 1938 Left Song Book”, which appeared in Our Subversive Voice: The History and Politics of English Protest Song, a project based at the University of East Anglia and funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Dr. Duncan has presented research at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA), and at special conferences like the McGill University Music and Antifascism Symposium.
At UMKC, Dr. Duncan teaches undergraduate music history courses, Muse (a first-year music history seminar), graduate survey courses covering the early twentieth century, the medieval and Renaissance eras, chamber music, and graduate methods courses in research and bibliography. He also serves as the Faculty Lead for Arts and Humanities Essentials curriculum across the campus.
A Liberty, MO native, Stewart graduated from William Jewell College in 2015 and has called Kansas City home for many years. He sings frequently with area professional choirs and is available to provide pre-concert talks and program notes for choral ensembles on a variety of topics.
