Kristy Swift

Kristy Swift, PhD and DMA, begins her new role as Assistant Professor of Music Studies at CCM on Aug. 15, 2024. In this role, Swift will lead the Bachelor of Arts in Music program offered through CCM's Division of General Studies.

In 2024, Swift received a UC Faculty Excellence Award in Research, Teaching and Service sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research. Her research and teaching have been further supported by UC’s Office of Research, CCM Faculty Development Funding and CCMpower.

Swift’s research interests include activism, social justice and musicology; digital humanities; film music; historiography; identity and music; music history pedagogy; music of Cincinnati; public musicology; opera; and sound, music and trauma. Her forthcoming monographs are Thinking About Music History: Textbooks and the Canon (Clemson University Press) and Music History Resources (Routledge), and she is co-editing the collection Trauma-informed Pedagogy and the Post-secondary Music Class (Routledge) with Kimber Andrews, Associate Director of the UC Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. Swift’s article and reviews are published in the Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Journal of the American Musicological Society and Music Research Forum, and she is developing the digital research and teaching tool Music History Materials. Swift has presented her research nationally and internationally at meetings of the American Musicological Society; Lilly Conference on College Teaching, Music and the Moving Image; Society for American Music; Teaching Music History; Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives; and Sound and Music Through the Lens of Trauma conferences.

At CCM, Swift has created new courses including Activism, Social Justice and Musicology; American Opera/American History; Black Opera; Handel Renaissance; Opera and Disability; Protest(ed) Music; Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Divas and Divos; Sing Cincinnati; Sound, Music and Trauma; Copland, Verdi and Wagner; and she has taught core curriculum classes in the undergraduate music history sequence, opera history and style, and graduate research and writing.

Swift serves on leadership boards of professional music organizations: she is currently co-chair of the American Musicological Society Pedagogy Study Group and a member of the College Music Society Subcommittee for Scholarship, Research and Pedagogy. She has chaired the planning committee of the Teaching Music History Conference and served on the Society for American Music Education Committee. Swift has been a reviewer for the Journal of Music History Pedagogy and Music Research Forum.
As organ and piano soloist and accompanist, Swift has performed throughout the United States and currently serves as Director of Music at Newtown United Methodist Church where she was a member of the organ committee for the installation of M. P. Rathke Opus 8 pipe organ.

Swift earned a PhD in musicology from UC, a DMA in organ studying with Roberta Gary at CCM, an MM in organ studying with Willis Bodine at the University of Florida and a BME from the University of Florida.

PhD: University of Cincinnati (musicology)

DMA: University of Cincinnati (organ)

MM: University of Florida (organ)

Bachelor of Music Education: University of Florida

Peer Reviewed Publications

Kristy Swift (2011. ) Grappling With Donald Jay Grout's Essays on Music Historiography .Journal of Music History Pedagogy, , 1 (2 ) ,135 -166

Published Books

Kristy Swift (in progress) Thinking About Music History: Textbooks and the Canon .Clemson University Press (Author)

Kristy Swift (in progress) Music History Resources: Modern Musicology in the College Classroom . (Author)

Paper Presentations

Kimber Andrews, Quinn Patrick Ankrum, and Kristy Swift (2022. ) Engaging in Trauma-informed Pedagogy Theory and Practice: For Who? For You! .Original Lilly Conference on College Teaching Miami University, Oxford, OH. Conference.

Kristy Swift (2022. ) Pedagogy of Sound, Music, and Trauma .Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Conference. Level:International

Jim Davis, Horace Maxile, Jr., Kristy Swift, Kristen Turner, and Jacqueline Warwick (2021. ) 360-degree Music History Pedagogy .Online. Professional Meeting. Level:International

Kristy Swift (2021. ) Drive-In Congregational Music Geographies: Reflections from the Parking Lot .Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, UK (remote). Conference. Level:International

Kristy Swift (2020. ) Teaching and Researching Sing Cincinnati on the Virtual Stage .UC (remote). UC.

Kristy Swift (2020. ) Creating Wicked Students: Protest and Protested Music Assignments and Assessments .Online. Conference. Level:National

Kristy Swift (2020. ) Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Hildur Guðnadóttir’s “Bathroom Dance” as Sonic Trans-diegetic Bridge in Joker .New York University (remote). Conference. Level:International

Kristy Swift (2016. ) Dissonant Dissidents: George Frideric Handel’s Music in Three Cinematic Mad Scenes .New York University , New York. Conference. Level:International

Kristy Swift (2015. ) Explaining Hell to the Savages”: The Origins of Donald Jay Grout’s A History of Western Music from 1950 to 1960 .Louisville, KY. Conference. Level:International

Kristy Swift (2015. ) For some reason, this one really got to me’: Narrating Jazz in Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca’s A History of Western Music .Society for American Music Lancaster, PA. Conference.

Kristy Swift (2013. ) Donald Jay Grout and ‘The Lunatic Fringe .Pittsburgh, PA. Professional Meeting. Level:International

American Opera

Black Opera

Copland

Disability and Music

Divas and Divos

Graduate Music History Review

Graduate Research and Writing

Handel Renaissance

Introduction to Music Studies

Madness in Opera

Musicology I (co-taught)

Music History II

Opera and Politics

Protest(ed) Music

Research Methods

Sing Cincinnati

Sound, Music, and Trauma

Sing Cincinnati

Verdi: Divas and Scholars

Wagner

Opera: History, Style, and Context

College-Conservatory of Music Mary Emery Hall 4240
Phone: 513 556 9510
swiftak@ucmail.uc.edu